Valor Rests Between a Rock and a Hard Wave
by Alice I
Summary: People he loves have been killed, kidnapped, or strapped with explosives, but it is his partner's sightless eyes staring at him accusingly that will haunt him forever - Not a death fic
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Valor Rests Between a Rock and a Hard Wave

**Author:** Alice I

**Betas:** Faye Dartmouth, Oughtaknowbetter, FraidyCat

**Rating:** T for mild vulgarity

**Warnings:** Mild vulgarity, NO slash, no parings, characters kept in cannon

**Disclaimer:** This is a work of fan fiction. I am earning no money or other benefit from this work other than the satisfaction that someone will enjoy the story.

**Spoilers:** Anything up to and including the episode with the fake tsunami.

**Summary: **People he loves have been killed, kidnapped, or strapped with explosives, but it is his partner's sightless eyes that will haunt him forever - Not a death fic

A/N - I want to give all of my betas a heaping helping of thanks! This story was supposed to be a quick little two or three chapter tale, but blossomed into this multi chapter fic. Personally I blame Oughtaknowbetter for all her "show don't tell" business! LOL! OKB should get some credit for the title. I struggled so much with it and ultimately ended up using one of her early suggestions with a twist. All of my betas are excellent authors and they have helped me to make this a very well written tale so they deserve many many kudos!

My Merlin fans please see my profile for a note just for you.

**Valor Rests Between a Rock and a Hard Wave**

**Chapter One**

"I know women who get ready for work faster than you do, Danno."

Steve sat on the arm of the sofa in Danny's living room, his mind a jumble of thoughts. A gnawing feeling of disquiet had been steadily growing, but Steve pushed it to the back of his mind, not really knowing the best way to attack the problem.

He picked up the small framed picture of a little girl, wondering not for the first time if he ought to pursue the same sort of happiness in his own life. The past six months had proven to be the most difficult in his life. Being back home was both a blessing and a curse for the ex-Navy SEAL. The island had a way of getting under his skin, making him relax his guard when he shouldn't.

Danny poked his head out from his bedroom, his tie not yet knotted and his dress shirt only half tucked in. "Keep your shirt on. Perfection takes time, ya know," Danny retorted, running his hands carefully across his hair, pretending to make sure every strand was in its place. "And stop calling me Danno," he added with a smirk before he turned back toward his room.

Steve couldn't help but smile at the Jersey native's antics. McGarrett had felt vulnerable and on-edge ever since the Governor had thanked him and his team for a job well done during the fake tsunami crisis. Nonetheless, it remained a fact; Danny had become one of the bright spots in his new life as the head of the Governor's special task force. He got up and walked over to the door of the bedroom.

"Come on, princess! Time's a wasting."

Danny paused, and deliberately spent an additional moment staring into the mirror, adjusting his tie. "Time's a wasting? What happened to Island time, Brah?" Danny countered, sarcastically.

Steve glared at the back of Danny's head, the man who had somehow, despite all indications to the contrary, become his best friend. "I don't understand you, Danny," he said, setting the picture frame down on the short desk just inside the door. "You claim to hate the beach..."

Danny's hands came away from his tie and took on that frenetic motion that indicated the Jersey native was about to launch into another one of his famous tirades. "I _claim _to hate the beach?"

Undeterred, Steve continued speaking over the man, ticking items off on his fingers as he went. "Yes, you _claim_ to hate the beach, you can't stand pineapple, and you make Tony Soprano look positively intellectual. If it wasn't for your daughter, you wouldn't even be here, in this _'pineapple infested hell hole'_ ,which I might add, is my home you are dissing."

Danny shook his head and Steve could see the small smile turning up the corners of his lips in the mirror. The detective spent one last moment admiring his image in the mirror. "You just love me because I'm a damn good detective."

_That's true_, Steve thought, _he is_...not that the ex-Navy SEAL was about to admit it out loud. Not to Danny's face. Not that it would matter: Jersey Boy could ferret out the truth of a situation with more clarity than any other cop Steve knew. The mainlander had an incredible eye for detail, with better instincts than anyone Steve had ever known, and that included his Navy buddies who had been trained to see past the obvious. Steve considered himself fortunate to have met Danny Williams: brutally honest, even with himself, willing to admit his own short-comings. There wasn't anyone that Steve would rather have protecting his six.

A moment later Danny moved past Steve, still standing in the door frame, dressed and ready for work. He grabbed the picture of Grace on his way out, and set it carefully down on the shelf where Steve had got it. With the generally cluttered appearance of Danny's apartment it seemed a little odd to Steve that the man was compelled to put the picture back in its rightful place in the living room.

"You know if you didn't insist on wearing a dress shirt and that tie you could be ready a lot faster."

Danny's wardrobe had always been a point of contention between the two men. Danny dressed like a mainlander and because of that he didn't fit in as effectively as he could have, but Danny didn't care. He wanted to dress like he was from the mainland.

Danny lifted the end of his tie up indignantly and began, "First of all, if you would drive your own truck to work once in awhile, you wouldn't have to take may car all the time then have to come and pick me up. _And_ I'll have you know..."

"Yeah, yeah, it's your favorite tie because Grace gave it to you for Father's Day."

"That is incorrect, Steven. This is my _second_ favorite tie, and yes Grace _did_ give it to me... at Christmas."

"Oh, I see. That explains the red dots down at the bottom of the _green_ tie?"

"Those aren't dots, genius. They're Christmas tree ornaments."

Steve stood up and raised his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. "Okay, so tell me, _genius_, why are you wearing a Christmas tie in April?"

Danny actually looked a little embarrassed as he turned away to grab his holster and service weapon. "I had Grace over the weekend and never got to the laundry. This is what was clean."

Danny glanced over at Steve just in time to see him roll his eyes impatiently. "What? Why are you so grumpy lately anyway?"

Steve had been able to hide his edginess from the rest of the team even if Danny had begun to pick up on it. The most effective means to keeping Danny in the dark about his concerns, was to continue to engage in what he considered his partner's preferred method of communication; that being the art of arguing.

"You are seriously gonna use Grace as an excuse? You aren't exactly a model for _Better Homes and Living_."

"What? My place isn't that bad." Danny defended, as he picked up breakfast dishes - or were they dinner dishes from the night before? - and tossed them in the sink.

Steve shrugged the explanation off and said, "So, you ready now?"

Before Danny could answer him with a classic snarky remark, the Jersey detective's cell phone emitted a ringtone that Steve didn't recognize.

Danny pulled his phone from his pocket and answered with a bright smile on his face. "Good morning, Monkey."

He was silent for a moment listening to his daughter, his smile melting and his expression growing grim. His free hand came up motioning his daughter to settle down even though she obviously couldn't see him.

"Grace, honey, calm down and tell me what happened," Danny said, as he indicated to Steve that they were leaving.

He grabbed his keys from the table by the door as he passed it, and absently tossed them to Steve as he continued to talk to Grace.

Steve slid into the driver's seat and without asking, drove in the direction of Grace's private school while Danny continued to speak to his daughter. The tone of Danny's voice and his serious expression told Steve that something had seriously upset the little girl.

"What have I told you about listening to Tommy? The kid is a pathological liar. So tell me, besides what Tommy said, what makes you think that Juliette is dead?"

That raised Steve's eyebrows but before he could listen in further, his own cell phone demanded his attention. He eyeballed the small screen in-between turning left at the corner and dodging the SUV aiming for the same spot. Crap; Governor Jameson was calling, and that meant that Lt. Commander McGarrett was going to break the law by conversing on his cell phone while driving.

He flipped open the phone. "McGarrett." Steve's face grew hard and serious as he listened to the Governor speak. "Did you say Juliette Kahoa, Governor?"

That got Danny's attention, and he turned to Steve.

"Governor, where did Juliette go to school?"

Steve realized that emphasizing Juliette's name while accelerating would alert Danny, but using the past tense when referring to the girl caused his partner's face to pale a shade as well. It looked like Grace's classmate Tommy might actually be right... again.

"Grace, I am coming to see you right now. Just stay in class and stay calm until I get there, okay?" Danny hung up his phone and looked at Steve obviously waiting for an explanation.

Steve dialed a familiar number, putting the device onto speaker so that both Chin and Kono could listen to the pair in the car.

"Okay, listen up. The Governor has assigned us a new case. She wants us to take over an HPD open file involving a series of serial rapes and murders that have been occurring all over Oahu. _We_ have the case now because the latest victim found, was the ten year old daughter of Congressman Daniel Kahoa."

Steve saw how furious his partner's eyes became as he spoke. This one was going to hit Danny hard.

"Kono, get in touch with HPD and get everything they have on the case so far, as well as anything you can find out about Jared Milton, Juliette's driver. She never made it home from school yesterday and no one can find either the driver or the car. Put a BOLO out on the car. Chin, go see Max and find out if he was able to get any information from the bodies that will lead us to the killer. Also, check any traffic cams around the school yesterday at 3:00. We need to find that car, and fast.

"Danny and I are headed to Juliette's school to interview the faculty and maybe some of the kids to see if anyone noticed anything out of the ordinary. Since she didn't come home she may have been grabbed at the school."

"You got it, Steve." Chin answered for both of them at Five-0 Headquarters, hanging up in order to get to the task at hand.

Steve glanced at the man in the passenger seat beside him, watching the profile of his partner staring out through the window. Danny, usually an unstoppable fountain of chatter, hadn't said a word and there was a pained expression on his face. "What're you thinking?"

Danny stuffed his phone back in his pocket, refusing to meet Steve's eyes. "I'm thinking that maybe I don't want to call Rachel about this. Grace had a sleep-over with Juliette last week. She is... she was, in the class above Grace, but they were still friends. What if Grace had been with Juliette when she was taken?" His hands clenched, the knuckles whitening. "God, Steve, it could have been Grace."

This hit a little too close to home for the Jersey native. Steve could hear the fear in his voice. "Danny, it wasn't Grace, but you should consider calling Rachel. She'll find out about it as soon as Grace gets home, and if she doesn't hear from you, especially since we are now on this case, she's going to be upset. Wouldn't you be?"

Danny glared back at him. "What, now you're an expert on marriages?"

"You're divorced," Steve pointed out, carefully keeping his eyes straight forward on the road.

Danny snorted. It wasn't tough for Steve to read the man; clearly Danny was hunting for some witty quip to throw back at him and was failing. After a moment he huffed and pulled out his cell, while Steve pretended that he wasn't listening to one half of the conversation.

"No, Rachel, I can't do that."

"Rachel, I swear I just heard about this like two minutes ago."

"You can't do that, Rachel. This is hard enough for Grace. She's never had to deal with the death of a friend before. Taking her out of school will scare her, make her feel like she isn't safe. I'm almost at the school now. I'll talk to Grace and reassure her that she _is_ safe there, but I don't want her driver to pick her up today."

There was a pause and Steve could almost hear Rachel's high pitched voice over the phone. Once again Danny's hands went into motion in a placating gesture that Rachel could probably picture clearly. "Okay, okay, do you want me to send a HPD officer to escort you?"

Danny raised his eyebrows at what ever it was that Rachel was saying. "All right, Rachel. I'll tell her to expect you this afternoon, and I promise I'll call you as soon as we know anything." There was another pause, and Danny turned away from Steve facing the window speaking quietly. "Rachel,... be safe."

Once Danny hung up the phone, there was a moment of awkward silence. Steve finally broke it asking, "What did Rachel say when you offered to send an HPD escort?"

"Oh, that. Well let's just say that I think anyone who even looks funny at either her or Grace will be _very_ sorry. Rachel can be deadly fierce when she needs to be."

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N** - Thank you for all the reviews and comments. I am pleased that the story is being well received. Once again many thanks and credit go to my betas who are absolutely the BEST. Thanks ladies.

**Chapter Two**

Pulling up to the Academy of the Pacific Rim, Steve found a spot close to the large stone steps leading up to the main school and administration building. Danny was out of the car and halfway to the staircase before Steve threw the Camaro into park. It didn't take him long to catch up to his partner, using long strides to make up for Danny's shorter, quicker steps.

The school principal came through the wide double doors and under the arched breezeway meeting the detectives before they had mounted the steps. The man extended his hand to Steve. "Good Morning, Commander McGarrett. I'm Raul Hukona, the principal here at APR. Governor Jameson just called my office and gave me an official statement about Juliette Kohoa. She said you were on your way. I'll have you come into my office."

Steve wasn't surprised to see the stout suited man turn directly to Danny and address him more familiarly. "Mr. Williams, Grace is in my office. She is understandably upset and said she wants to leave school with you, but I don't think that would be a wise at this point."

Danny shook the man's hand and in a familiar gesture placed a hand on his shoulder. "I agree. I told Rachel that she should remain in school today, but she will be picking Grace up personally this afternoon."

Nodding, the principal turned and led the men into the school. Steve looked around noting the art work covering the stone and mortar hallways of the elementary portion of the school. It felt small and cramped to his six-foot-two frame. The main school office seemed positively spacious in comparison, with wide windows letting in an abundance of sunshine behind the long desk, where the school secretary sat amidst an array of file cabinets, and two desks; one for herself and another for an office assistant.

The principal's office was at the far end of the main office and was easily twice the size of Steve's own spacious office back at the palace. As soon as they walked in through the door, Grace, who had been sitting quietly in a oversized leather chair facing Principal Hukona's desk literally launched herself from her seat and ran into Danny's waiting arms.

"Daddy!"

It never ceased to amaze Steve how the presence of his daughter transformed the rough-around-the-edges Jersey transplant into the veritable image of a gentle and soft spoken individual.

"Grace," he spoke into her ear as he hugged her tightly.

After a moment, Grace pulled back as big tears welled up in her eyes. "Is it true, what Tommy said about Juliette?"

Danny glanced back over his shoulder at Steve and the principal then back to his daughter. "Grace, I don't know exactly what Tommy told you, but something bad happened to Juliette. I'm afraid she won't be coming back. I'm so sorry, Monkey."

That was all it took for Grace to lose any composure she had fought for as she burst into tears, clinging to her father as though he were a life raft in the middle of the ocean. Steve felt the anger begin to build inside. They would catch the person responsible for this atrocity and bring him to justice if it was the last thing he ever did.

Principal Hukona stepped off to the side with Steve to give Danny and Grace a modicum of privacy as he addressed Steve. "I have scheduled an assembly for 9:00 to break this terrible news to the rest of the children. We will have grief counselors available at the end of that assembly. What can we do to assist you in your investigation, Commander McGarrett?"

"Detective Williams will need to speak with any staff that is involved with the children at dismissal time. I want to talk to some of the children who knew Juliette, starting with Grace's friend Tommy. He seemed to know about this before anyone else did. I want to know how that could be."

Principal Hukona sighed, and shook his head. "I have already spoken to Tommy Bannister. You have to try to understand. Young Mr. Bannister has a history of telling some tall tales. He spoke only with Grace who came directly to me. As soon as I found out that Juliette was missing I told him not to discuss this with any more of his classmates, but obviously he should talk to you."

The man poked his head out of the office and spoke to the secretary in the main office. "Rebecca, please have Tommy Bannister, Rory Kalakona, and Margaret Masterson come down to my office immediately. Also I'll need the dismissal roster from yesterday and the faculty on duty to meet with Detective Williams in the cafeteria right away."

Danny spoke to Grace in soft tones for a few more minutes until she stopped crying and he stood up to walk her back to her classroom. As he led her from the principal's office, Steve knelt down so that he could look at Grace in the eyes. "Grace, it's going to be alright. I promise you that Danno and I will take care of this."

The child sniffled a little. "I know, Danno always gets the bad guys."

Steve had to smile at Grace's unwavering faith in her father, and he knew that Grace was, for the most part, right.

Tommy Bannister, blonde hair hanging over his forehead, was the first child Steve interviewed. "Grace talks about you. Are you a real Navy SEAL?" the boy asked, with excitement in his eyes.

"Yes I am. Is that what you want to be when you grow up?" Steve asked. A voice in the back of his mind told him to connect with this kid rather than scare him if he wanted to get reliable information.

"Maybe, but only if I can't get into the space academy."

Steve grinned at the boy, but decided not to tell him there was no such thing as a 'space academy'. The boy was full of energy with bright eyes and a mischievous streak that showed through clearly. "So, Tommy, tell me what you know about Juliette Kahoa."

The youngster looked around almost as though he wanted to make sure no one was listening, then he leaned in conspiratorially. "She didn't come home last night. I thought her driver kidnapped her."

Steve frowned at the boy. "Why did you think her driver had kidnapped her?"

Tommy had an odd conjunction of excitement and dread showing in his face. "The police showed up at her house last night and even came over and asked me about her and who I saw her with yesterday."

"She lives near your house?" Steve wanted to know.

"Yeah, they live next door." Tommy said.

"Okay, what did you tell the police when they spoke to you?" Steve pressed. He knew he could just as easily read the HPD report, but he wanted the information first-hand.

Tommy shrugged. "She got in the car with him. That's the last time I saw her. They argued about the window."

"The window?" Steve asked, completely nonplussed.

"Juliette always wants the window down when they are driving, but he wants them up for the air conditioning. Juliette never really liked air conditioning. She said it made her sniffle. She lowered the window down as they were driving away."

"So what made you think that Juliette was dead?" Steve wanted to know, not quite following the boy's logic.

Tommy suddenly looked nervous. "I don't know, I didn't see anything, it's just her mom went ballistic this morning, screaming about her baby. I watch a lot of TV crime shows and I know that no one screams like that unless someone is dead."

Steve frowned in confusion. "You heard Juliette's mom this morning? How close are your homes?"

"Well they aren't that close, but..." Tommy hesitated and looked decidedly guilty now.

Steve just crossed his arms over his chest and gave the boy a hard stare. The stare worked a lot better with Tommy than it did with hardened criminals.

"I might have a telescope that I use from time to time."

Steve just raised his eyebrow.

"But I can pretty much hear mostly what happens over there." Steve must have given him one of those 'faces' Danny was always talking about because the boy added quickly, "Well, if it gets loud, anyway."

Steve had to admit, the boy had a point. People usually didn't start screaming unless the news was bad, really bad. The other two kids that Steve talked to were not able to give him any better information. They also had observed Juliette leaving with her driver and that was the last time anyone had seen her.

Danny walked back into the main office just as Margaret Masterson left with tears streaming down her face. McGarrett noticed Danny's eyes following the distraught girl as she was ushered out with the school secretary and shook his head at Steve as though it was his fault.

"What?"

"It must be your winning way with children. Look, I spoke with the two dismissal monitors and looked over the sign-out sheets. Nothing out of the ordinary happened here. Even though the faculty know Milton, he still has to show his ID, which he did, and then he signed her out. No one noticed any tension between Milton and Juliette and they left just like any other day."

* * *

The ride back to the palace was almost as tense as the ride to the school. Danny was being unusually quiet, which was in turn setting Steve on edge. He knew that sooner or later Danny was going to blow, and it happened just as they were walking in through the double glass doors into the Five-0 headquarters.

"What kind of sick bastard rapes and kills a ten-year-old girl?" the Jersey native demanded of no one in particular. "According to the files Kono got from HPD, all of the previous victims have been older; ranging from seventeen to twenty-five, so what compelled this sicko to switch to a little girl?" Danny raged on, walking past the offices as he and Steve approached the central command area with the large computer central table.

Chin joined them from his own office where he had been running down information on the BOLO as well as background on Juliette's driver.

Chin nodded his head in agreement. "It is a disturbing change in the pattern, and psychologically doesn't fit. The first victim was a teenager, but the others were all adults."

Kono already had information on the case up on the computer screen and turned to the men as they walked into the central command area. "It may have something to do with Juliette's physical appearance. She didn't look like a little girl."

"What? This girl was a little more than a year older than Grace. You can't tell me that she looked like an adult," Danny stormed.

Steve turned a confused face to his partner. "What? You don't know what she looks like? I assumed that you had met this girl. She was Grace's friend, right?"

"Yes, Steven, she was Grace's friend, and no, I never met her personally. Grace talked about her a few times. It may surprise you to know that I actually listen when my kid talks to me."

Steve glanced between Kono and Chin hoping that neither of the two detectives were taking offense to Danny's aggravated tone. It was clear that the cousins understood why this was such a volatile issue for him.

Kono tossed a set of pictures of Juliette Kahoa up on the large screen. "Juliette may have been the exception to the pattern, but she could have easily been mistaken for an adult. She was 5'7", weighed 110 pounds, and had physically matured well beyond her age. Only her facial features gave away that she was younger than the other victims. Her murder incorporated every detail of the previous murders including ones that have not been reported by the news media, so it's definitely our guy."

"What details?" Steve asked.

Kono glanced at Danny then continued, "All of the victims were strangled. Both arms showed spiral fractures and the lower legs were smashed with some form of blunt object. Like the other victims, the preliminary report of Juliette's autopsy indicates these injuries occurred prior to death."

"So he tortured her before he raped and killed her." Danny clarified in a deadly tone. Steve didn't miss the white knuckles clutching the edge of the table.

The next set of images showed the bodies of each of the victims. True to what Kono said, Juliette's body showed all of the same injuries as the others. Danny's face became stone as he gazed at the images. Steve knew that he had seen crime scene photos many times before and knew that Danny was a professional, but seeing one of his daughter's classmates had clearly struck a chord with the mainlander.

Chin shook his head at the gruesome images on the screen, but continued his report. "The car and driver are nowhere to be found. I pulled traffic cam images from the time they left the school."

Chin went to the console and opened up a series of images. "Check this out. It looks like they stopped for icecream, and while Juliette and Milton were in the shop someone got in the car. The back window of the car was open and it looks like he reached in and unlocked the door that way."

"Can you zoom in on that?" Steve asked walking up to the screen.

Chin punched a few commands into the console and the image grew larger and sharpened quite a bit, but it was still not clear enough to see the face of the man entering the back seat of the car. "Medium height, five-ten or so. Dark hair. Tan looks pretty good; I'm betting he's an islander. What do you think, cuz?"

Kono too looked closely at the blurry image. "Maybe. Look at his hands; they look lighter than the rest of him. A gardener, maybe, using gloves?"

Chin moved the video further in time. "Milton and Juliette came out from the ice cream shop and got back in the car, then they just sat there for a few minutes. I'm guessing the intruder had a weapon and threatened one or both of them."

"Were you able to follow the car?" Steve asked.

"For a while, yes. They headed north on the Lunalilo up to the Likelike highway. Once they got up to the watershed we lose them. No traffic cams up there."

Chin's cell rang and he stepped off to the side as Steve and Danny continued to look over the map, trying to discern where the kidnapper and his victims would have gone.

"Where was Juliette found?" Danny asked, tearing his eyes away from the gruesome images of his daughter's friend that Kono had put up on the other screen.

"She was found in the woods just behind the government building on Ala Koolau." Kono put an electronic pin of the body's location on the map.

Danny rocked back and forth on his heels, hands moving side to side. "The Congressman's daughter was dumped in the woods behind a government building? That sounds like a message to me. Are we sure this is the same case?"

Steve wasn't convinced. "That's possible, but the details still fit with the other victims. They were found in wooded areas as well. From what the files say, the bodies were dumped at the murder sites. It could just be a coincidence."

"Still fit? Steve, none of it fits. I don't care how old Juliette looked. She was a ten-year-old little girl!" At the exasperated look on Steve's face, Danny continued. "Okay she was a ten-year-old, very tall girl, but she was still just a kid! She doesn't fit the pattern, she shouldn't have been selected by this guy based on all his other victims. She was wearing a private school uniform when this bastard took her! How does that fit?"

Kono was studying the map and she interrupted, "Hey guys, look at this." She pulled up the map that showed the last location of the car and the location where the body was found. "This area is riddled with deep ravines. The Kaneohe Forest Reserve is here, on the other side of the H3, which runs behind the woods Juliette was found in. We should see if the car is down at the bottom of one of those ravines."

Chin too had information, closing up his cell phone. "Caught a break, guys. Max just sent me a partial fingerprint that he lifted from Juliette's body. I can run it right here."

"You do that." Steve couldn't help the grim satisfaction he felt; the case was breaking wide open. "Kono, I want a chopper in the air over the Kaneohe ASAP."

"You got it, boss." Kono flipped open her own cell, punching in speed dial.

It didn't take Chin long to run the print Max sent. "Hey, our guy got sloppy with Juliette. The partial fingerprint that Max found came back with a match. Meet Iakona Kalawai, a twenty-eight year old native with an unstable psychiatric history."

More tapping on the surface of the touch screen computer, and a man's head appeared for all to see: not old, those features, but tired and beaten. The eyes were those of a man who had seen too much life in too short a time. What was more important, however, to Steve McGarrett, was the similarity to the shadowy figure who had forced his way into the car carrying Juliette Kahoa and her driver.

Chin wasn't finished, pulling up additional details on the suspect. "Kalawai grew up on the island spending most of his time cave diving and surfing until he ended up institutionalized at the age of fifteen. From that point forward he spent the rest of his teen years and early twenties in and out of psychiatric care as well as in and out of jail. He has a long record, complete with robbery, assault and battery and—get this, Steve-two sexual misconduct charges. Steve, he also has several weapons charges here as well. He is out on parole and has a registered address in Wai'anae about twenty-two miles northwest of here. The house is owned by his father."

The photo of Kalawai matched the image of the man getting into Milton's car. Steve nodded decisively. "This is our guy, but we're not taking any chances with this one. We'll take two cars and gear up in flak jackets to take him down," Steve looked directly at Danny, "By the book."

Danny was teetering on the edge of losing his professional detachment with this case. The last thing Steve wanted to see was Danny channeling his own somewhat lax attitude toward proper police procedure; not to mention the fact that if given the chance Danny just might beat the suspect within an inch of his life.

The silver Camaro and Chin's black SUV pulled up to the house, without sirens, stealth uppermost in their minds. They wanted—no, needed-to get this guy before he bolted. They silently eased themselves out of their vehicles, guns drawn. Steve motioned for Chin and Kono to cover the back, indicating that he and Danny would head up the short sidewalk to the front porch. He took a moment for a quick look at his partner, but Danny was still under control, ready to take orders. Steve watched the other two team members as they disappeared around the side of the house headed toward the back door. He waited a few seconds to give Kono and Chin time to get into place before pounding on the front door and calling out, "Open up, Five-0!"

There was a sudden flurry of movement inside the house and a shout from near the back of the structure. It sounded like Chin and Kono had been spotted by someone inside the house. Steve wasn't going to wait any longer and kicked the door down covering the left side of the room while Danny advanced covering the right. The sound of glass shattering in a room off to the left drew their attention. Danny moved quickly toward the sound and like Steve kicked the door open only to see a fleeting look at their suspect disappearing through the shattered window.

"Go, go! He's getting away!" Danny shouted, backing out of the small bedroom. Steve heard Chin and Kono crashing in through the back door just as the sound of a motor revved outside the shattered window. Kalawai was taking off on a bike. Steve and Danny bolted through the remnants of the front door in time to see Kalawai coming out from around the side of the house on an old model dirt bike. His left arm came up pointing directly at them and Steve barely had time to react before he heard Danny's shout.

"Gun!"

Danny was far more powerful than his smaller frame would indicate as he plowed into Steve sending him flying over the porch railing and dropped to the wooden floor, firing off two quick rounds. Steve was peripherally aware of the fact that a bullet hole now took up residence in the frame of the front door where only moments ago his head had been.

Danny's shots had no effect because Kalawai was moving too fast and erratically to get a clean shot at him. The dirt bike shot through the short brush at the side of the yard and sped off into the neighboring yard. Steve and Danny were halfway to the car before Kalawai re-emerged and gained the asphalt of the street.

Steve hopped up, sliding across the hood of the Camaro even as his now bruised ribs protested, and was inside with the engine revved ready to hit the accelerator just as Danny was closing the door on the passenger side.

"Left! Wai'anae Valley Road! Left!" Danny had obviously not lost eye contact on the fleeing fugitive. "Floor it!"

Steve didn't need to be told twice. He wanted this guy as much as Danny did. The dirt bike was easily a block ahead of the Camaro as they turned left in pursuit.

Normally the bike would be no match in speed for the V8 engine of the car, but traffic was heavy at this time of day and the bike was able to easily weave through traffic where the Camaro was hindered, dodging a rusty pickup truck moving slowly down the road, and a city bus just pulling out into traffic after picking up a passenger. Danny grabbed the hand grip above the passenger side window as Steve veered sharply to avoid sideswiping a minivan filled with kids in soccer uniforms.

Danny's phone rang and he threw it on speaker, not wanting to be distracted from visually following the suspect. Kono's voice crackled into the air.

"We got blocked by a cement truck turning off Wai'anae Valley. Where are you guys?"

Steve watched as the bike inexplicably began to slow down as it navigated through the traffic. "West on Wai'anae Valley. Wait a sec; he's slowing down."

Danny had the answer. "Check out his exhaust! I think he's running out of gas. We may have him!"

The helmeted driver tossed a fast glance over his shoulder; he knew that Five-0 was on his tail. That was obvious. It was equally as obvious that the man wasn't willing to give up quietly. He gunned his engine, sliding between the lanes of traffic, the horns of outraged drivers marking his path, using up the last drops of precious octane.

The road ahead swerved to the left, a guard rail protecting the right from careless drivers. The suspect wasn't careless, but he was desperate. He sped up, aiming for the guard rail.

"He's headed to Pokai Bay point!" Steve called over the noise of the engine. "Dammit, he's going to jump the rail!"

"Don't slow down, now! Ram it! Don't let this bastard get away!" Danny clutched the front dash, preparing himself.

What the hell-? Danny, telling him to smash the rail? Steve didn't need a second invitation. He stomped on the accelerator and hit the guardrail at nearly 70 mph, breaking through the metal barrier with relative ease, but completely smashing the front end of the car in the process. "Chin and Kono should be able to follow that." Steve remarked, but got no reaction from his partner. Danny's normally snarky comments were absent, squeezed out by his intense focus on catching Kalawai.

"Where the hell does he think he's going to go?" Danny shouted, as he saw that Kalawai was headed straight for the point. Before he could get there the bike slowed, sputtered and stopped. Kalawai dumped the bike and started running full tilt for the end of the point. Steve brought the Camaro to a stop and both men jumped out, guns drawn, chasing after the suspect. They caught up to him just as he skidded to a halt on a cliff over looking the ocean some sixty feet below.

Danny was in the lead. "Freeze! Iakona Kalawai, you are under arrest."

The man turned back and saw both Five-0 detectives with their guns pointed right at him. He himself no longer had his gun and Steve wondered grimly what had happened to it; maybe lying on the ground near the dumped bike? That answer could wait.

No time for that now. Kalawai turned once again and looked out over the edge of the cliff. "Don't do it, Kalawai," Danny warned. "There's nowhere to go."

Yes, there was. Steve took a moment to glance down over the cliff face. They were about sixty feet, give or take a few feet, from the shoreline, and at least sixty feet above the churning waves of the cove formed by the point of cliff jutting out into Pokai Bay. The point and the south end of the bay formed a semi circle of land that created a wild cove on the south end of the bay. The tide was coming in, causing the rough waters of the ocean to crash up against the cliff face before rushing back out into the swirling eddies of the cove. Steve caught sight of a cave near the base of the point's cliff face that was nearly submerged with the incoming tide. If he ended up having to shoot Kalawai it could take a long time to recover the body from the waters below. He would most likely wash up into the cave and they would have to send divers in after him.

Not the scenario that Lt. Commander Steve McGarrett wanted. He eased himself away from Danny, trying for another angle of approach, somewhere that he could prevent Kalawai from tossing himself into the waters below.

Hear that, Danno? I want to tell you to book 'im, not call for scuba gear to retrieve a dead body. Never thought you'd hear that from me, did'ja?

"Give it up, Kalawai! You're caught!" Danny yelled, as he slowly advanced, attention focused solely on the suspect in front of them.

Much to Steve's astonishment, Kalawai turned around calmly with his back to them and placed his hands behind his head, surrendering.

Steve halted, nervous. This was a mentally unstable individual who had raped and brutally murdered five women and a ten-year-old girl. Surrender just didn't seem to fit. Steve's SEAL-trained instincts were telling him this was a trick, but he couldn't see how. Kalawai had no weapon, nowhere to run, and he was faced with two guns pointed at him, by two very serious men. Surrender was the only reasonable option—but Kalawai wasn't reasonable. He wasn't sane.

"Danny, watch yourself." Steve called to his partner as Danny tossed a disbelieving stare at Steve.

Danny nodded, sliding his piece back into his holster in order to pull out his handcuffs, trusting Steve to keep the suspect covered. He walked toward Kalawai, reaching for the man's arms to twist them into position for the cuffs.

Steve still had a bad feeling about Kalawai. The suspect had run straight to this point; somehow this was a part of his escape plan. The man grew up on this island, and he knew these waters inside and out. He spent the bulk of his youth cave diving...

Suddenly Steve knew what was about to happen and he was powerless to stop it. "Danny!"

Danny placed the handcuff around one of Kalawai's wrists when he heard Steve call his name in alarm. In that split instant when he was distracted by Steve's shout, Kalawai grabbed Danny's wrist, and twisted his body to put Danny directly between himself and Steve's gun. He cocked back his left elbow and connected with Danny's head hard enough that Steve could hear the impact clearly.

Steve watched, horrified, feet automatically carrying him forward. He couldn't shoot because Danny was now in his line of fire.

He couldn't stop the inevitable. He could only watch as Kalawai, who still had hold of Danny, dived forward, taking the stunned detective with him off the edge of the cliff to the churning water below.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N - **Thank you so much for the wonderful reviews and the copious amounts of alerts and favorites listings. It is very nice to know that all this hard work is appreciated. I know I say this in every author's notes, but it bears repeating - Much thanks and kudos to my three wonderful betas. Oughtaknowbetter, Faye Dartmouth, and FraidyCat.

I have no idea what the next new episode will hold for us, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the 10 million dollars that was mysteriously returned to the police locker will be addressed very soon. In this story I also mention that money and Steve's plan on how to deal with the situation. If the issue is dealt with in the next new episode then my story will no longer be "in cannon", but I don't want to change anything. This has taken far too long to write to go back and fit in some new cannon fact.  
Thanks again for reading and I am very pleased that so many of you have taken a liking to the story.  
Please enjoy.  
Alice I

**Chapter Three**

Everything seemed to move in slow motion, like some surreal nightmare.

Kalawai grabbed Danny's wrist, turning his body so that Danny was now blocking his aim. He used his free elbow to sideswipe Danny in the temple. Steve watched as Danny's head snapped back, but instead of being propelled back and to the side, out of the line of fire, he stayed put because Kalawai didn't let go of his partner.

A shield! That was what Kalawai had intended from the first. Steve would have fired on the suspect, and damn the need to call in divers, if Danny hadn't been standing right in front of him; which is precisely what Kalawai wanted.

Too late, Steve knew what was coming even as his feet carried him forward, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. To Steve's utter horror, Kalawai, still holding firmly onto Danny, dove straight off the cliff face, taking the stunned detective down with him.

"No no no, Danny!" Steve threw himself forward, futilely trying to grab hold of Danny, only to meet with thin air as he crashed to the ground at the cliff's edge. The two men fell to the churning waves below, disappearing under the surface. Steve stared at the spot where they broke through the water, desperate to see them resurface.

_There! There they were! _Two heads broke through the waves, Kalawai's dark hair plastered wetly across his face. Amazingly, Danny still held the open side of the handcuffs and pulled Kalawai toward him. Danny smashed his free fist into the man's face and, if the sudden evidence of red coloring the water was any indication, it was a powerful blow.

Steve felt a measure of pride in his partner's stubborn determination, while at the same time cursing him. _Damn it Danny, let him go before he drowns you._ Without taking his eyes off the scene below, Steve jumped to his feet and tore off his flak jacket. SEAL training came into play. Rescue: Remove extraneous gear. Assess water conditions.

Even as he dumped his holster, gun, phone, and flak gear to the ground, he could see Danny struggling to stay above water, weighted down by his own heavy bullet proof vest. Fury flared inside of Steve as he watched Kalawai use his free hand to push Danny under the surface, yet his partner still held fast to the open end of the handcuffs.

Steve was dimly aware of Chin and Kono arriving. He heard Kono shout to her cousin, telling him to call for an ambulance, and as his shoulder holster and piece hit the ground, he heard Chin's alarmed call to him to wait, but none of that mattered. His partner was in a life or death battle-and losing. The SEAL took a huge breath and without any hesitation dived off the edge.

* * *

..

* * *

To say that Danny was surprised by Kalawai's sudden surrender was a monumental understatement. It took him a moment to process that the man had surrendered. He glanced back at Steve with a look of stunned disbelief. Steve called out, "Danny, watch yourself."

_Like I need the reminder?_ Danny holstered his weapon and carefully approached Kalawai. Pulling his handcuffs out, he reached up and secured one bracelet to Kalawai's wrist.

Before he could even register the movement, Danny felt Kalawai grab his wrist and pivot. The hit to his head was a shock, but it was nothing to the sensation of falling through space. Danny caught sight of the ocean below him approaching at a dizzying speed, but his first response was outrage. The son of a bitch had just popped him in the head and thrown him off a cliff!

The cold water hit him with the force of a small tsunami, and he nearly lost his hold on the cuffs. _Not yet, bastard! You're not escaping that easily!_ Danny welcomed the sharp pain in his palm that assured him he still had his captive even as he was tumbled and tossed in the tumultuous tempest of the churning eddies of the cove.

Water was breaking over his head and clawing its way into his nose and mouth. Dammit, he couldn't afford to drown now! Still under water, a wave slammed the stubborn Jersey detective into a rock, and another shoved him back out toward the open ocean before he could grab onto something other than his suspect.

Danny's lungs burned as he held his breath, and his eyes stung with salt water. His vest weighed him down, but pulling it off wasn't an option, not if he wanted to hang onto this murderer of children. His head broke the surface and he gulped in a huge lungful of air along with a good measure of water. Coughing and sputtering and spurred on by rage, he yanked his hand holding the cuffed Kalawai closer. Kalawai's head broke the surface; Danny balled up his other fist and punched the man square in the nose; something gave, and red appeared on Kalawai's face, salt water sweeping the blood away.

Another wave—Danny gulped in precious air, choking on the salt water that came along with the oxygen, but he refused to let Kalawai go even as he pulled relentlessly on the cuffs. Real fear blossomed in Danny's mind; he was in real trouble now. Then a powerful surging wave rolled over Danny's head, and he felt himself once again submerged.

The fear fought for dominance with rage within Danny. Dammit, Kalawai was pushing him down! Danny shoved back, breaking the surface and prepared to smash the bastard in the face again when suddenly the tide switched directions. The cuffs that Danny held were ripped from his grasp with a tearing pain across the flesh of his palm.

The anger bled out quickly as fatigue and lack of oxygen began to sap his strength when another wave crested, throwing salt water into his face. At this point, Danny barely registered that Kalawai was gone.

Survival. All else was irrelevant. His suspect was gone, his oxygen was gone and in less than a few moments his life would be gone. An image of Grace floated across his mind's eye, the weight of the vest dragging him down under the surface of the water.

He had a vague sense of being pulled oceanward with the tide, only to have the water violently change direction a moment later. _Yo, Kono! These good surfing conditions?_ Danny felt as though he had been fighting to stay afloat for hours as the fatigue settled deep in his muscles.

His face was pointed skyward trying to stay above the surface of the water, gulping in air every chance he got. As if of their own accord, Danny's arms extended out to the sides, pressing down on the surface of the water trying to leverage his face higher above the waves, knowing that panic was trying to steal away what little strength he had left.

The surging water carried him with stunning speed toward the cliff face, but there was nothing Danny could do to stop his forward momentum. The tide slammed him into the side of the rock with tremendous force, expelling the remaining air he had in his lungs, smacking the side of his head against the rock, and blackness swallowed him whole.

* * *

..

* * *

Steve entered the water at breakneck speed, his eyes never leaving his partner. The eddies in this cove were wild but predictable if you were familiar with them, and Steve McGarrett was. Just as he broke through the surface, he saw Danny being washed toward the rock face.

No time for emotions. Steve arched his body upward, angling for as shallow a dive as possible. The memory of his Training Chief came unbidden to him as he kicked his feet furiously trying to break the surface and get to Danny.

"_How many of you have seen an actual drowning?" the burley man demanded of the SEAL training group. _

_Steve raised his hand along with two other men whom he knew had grown up in costal areas._

_Chief Hollister fastened Steve with a ferocious glare. "McGarrett, you think you know what a drowning man looks like?"_

"_Sir, yes, Sir."_

"_Alright, princess, why don't you educate the rest of us dumb asses?"_

"_Sir! It isn't like what most people see on TV; drowning is almost never a dramatic event."_

_This statement earned him an even deeper glare from Chief Hollister and a few snickers from his fellow trainees, but Steve knew exactly what he was talking about and wouldn't be intimidated._

"_Someone who is drowning doesn't thrash their arms around and scream for help. They get very still, and their arms go out to the sides almost like they're trying to keep their head above the water. It's instinctive. Drowning people, at least the ones in real trouble, don't scream for help, because they can't. All that person is trying to do is breathe. A lot of people, kids mostly, have drowned less than a few feet from their parents or someone else, only no one knew what was happening."_

_Chief Hollister crossed his arms over his chest and walked around the assembled group of trainees until he stopped just behind Steve. Then he hollered right in his ear, "Is that a fact, Sailor?"_

"_Sir, yes, Sir!"_

"_Congratulations, Island-boy, you may actually know something."_

Steve knew what a drowning man looked like, and Danny was drowning. Determined not to let his partner become another statistic, Steve kicked harder. He broke the surface just in time to see Danny's limp body slide off the rock and almost gracefully slip under the water.

Steve dove down hard, knowing that the undertow would grab Danny and pull him toward the cave. Salt water stung his eyes, but he ignored the sensation as he kicked his feet and pumped his arms 'frog-man' style with every ounce of strength he could muster.

Steve felt the shift in the tide before he could get close enough to enter the cave, struggling vainly against the forces of mother nature only to be violently flushed back toward the swirling eddies of the cove.

His lungs burning, Steve had no choice but to come up for air. He looked out at the ocean beyond the cove, and saw the next surge coming in. The voice of Chief Hollister rang in his mind again.

"_Failure is not in your vocabulary! You are United States Navy, but more than that, you will one day be SEALs. Use what ever you have available to you to get the job done! If you don't have what you need, find it or make it. Failure is NOT an option!"_

Taking a huge breath, he dove back down as the tide surged into the cove again. This time he swam _with_ the tide allowing the undertow to take him. He angled his body toward the cave, using the ocean's power to propel him along.

"_Failure is NOT an option!"_

Steve instinctively knew he only had seconds before the tide would recede again, washing him back out into the cove. He concentrated all of his focus on kicking.

_There it is, just up ahead._

Steve passed the mouth of the cave at the same time he felt the water begin to switch directions. He grabbed the rock of the cave mouth and pulled himself inside plastering his body up against the wall to prevent himself being washed out again.

Even as he clung to the wall, Steve searched the interior of the cave, his eyes burning with the salt water. The deeper in, the blacker it got. The underwater cavern was enormous, and Danny could be anywhere. Steve knew Danny was in here, but he had neither the time nor air to search the entire cave.

Panic began to prickle at the edges of his awareness. He forced it down, calming his mind. Steve could feel the currents within the cave itself and allowed his awareness to seek out the flow.

A tiny movement like a flutter just out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He saw a tiny flash of red and then it was gone. The currents inside the cave could have swept Danny in that direction.

"_Use your instincts. If you didn't have good instincts, you would not have gotten this far through SEAL training. Your instincts will not lead you astray if you learn how to understand your gut."_

Steve's gut told him to follow that movement and he pushed off the wall of the cave, torpedoing himself straight toward what he thought he saw, arms stretched out in front of him. Relief flooded through him when his outstretched hands came in contact with something solid.

He grabbed hold tightly and began swimming with all of his strength back toward the mouth of the cave, but the body was exceptionally heavy. _The vest!_ Steve reached down the side of the limp form and ripped at the velcro keeping the water laden vest on his partner. He had to struggle to get the vest out from underneath limp arms, but sheer determination soon found the heavy material slowing sinking to the floor of the cavern.

The tide had changed directions at least twice since Steve had entered the cave, causing swirling and confused currents within the submerged chamber. Steve looked, but couldn't see the mouth of the cave anymore. _Where the hell was it?_

His lungs were burning, and he had become disoriented. Panic threatened to over-take him.

"_A calm mind will always find the solution. Fear is your enemy, more than anyone you will be fighting against. Never give in to fear."_

He fought down the panic. He'd been taught to use what was available to him, so Steve allowed the water's current to guide him.

Swimming hard with the strongest current quickly brought him to a slightly lighter area and moments later he was able to dimly make out the mouth of the cave. Once past the rock Steve angled his body toward the surface.

He tightened his grip around Danny's chest and kicked harder. The air in his lungs steadily seeped out of his nose in a line of bubbles trailing behind him as he swam for the surface. Blackness encroached his peripheral vision. His muscles began to grow weaker and Danny felt like lead in his arm.

"_Suck it up, Sailor, and dig deep! You will not quit, you will not fail, you will not stop!"_

Steve's vision went black. His left arm, firmly wrapped around Danny's chest, had gone numb, but he kept kicking. Finally breaking the surface, Steve sucked in huge lungfuls of air which helped to clear his vision. He hauled his precious cargo above the surface even as the tide swept them both toward the cliff face at incredible speed.

Sheer instinct and training allowed McGarrett to flip his body in the nick of time so that he hit the wall feet first. He slammed into the wall with a jarring force that shot through his legs all the way up to his hips. He pushed off with every ounce of strength he had, but the water was too powerful and the SEAL's efforts only managed to keep him and his partner from being pummeled against the rock face.

As the water began to recede again, Steve pushed off with tremendous force in the direction of the shoreline, kicking hard. The next time the tide came in, Steve was ready. Keeping his body between Danny and the rock wall, the SEAL used the force of the tide coming in to propel them closer to the shore until the cliff came close.

_Use the power of the water._

When he kicked off the wall, he angled his body toward the shore, allowing the current to propel him along. This technique was physically pounding on his bones, and exhausting, but it kept them moving roughly parallel to the point and toward the shoreline.

Steve didn't realize he had gotten into shallow water until Kono appeared at his side.

"Steve! Oh, my God!"

He spared her a quick glance and saw fear etched in her face as she moved to the other side of Danny and grabbed him under the arm. They both dragged the limp detective to shore and, once on the rock-strewn beach, laid him down on his back.

The sight that met Steve eyes made his heart freeze. Danny was still. His lips were blue, his eyes open, glassy and sightless. His mouth was slightly open and he wasn't breathing. Steve had seen dead bodies pulled from the water before, limp and slack, colorless faces with sea water dripping off to melt into the beach.

Danny looked dead.

"_Giving up is NOT an option, Sailor. Failure is NOT an option!"_

Steve dropped to his knees next to Danny and felt for a pulse. The man was cold, flaccid, and still. No pulse, no sign of life.

"No. You are not dead, not yet, not on my watch," Steve ripped Danny's shirt open.

Kono took her cue from Steve and tipped Danny's head up to begin rescue breathing, but Danny's tie had tightened around his neck and was getting in the way. Kono tried to remove it, but couldn't get the water logged knot undone. Without missing a beat, Steve grabbed the ever present knife from one of his many pockets, and cut the offending material away from his partner's neck.

Kono blew directly into Danny's lungs, and Steve wasted no more time, beginning chest compressions. Each time he pressed down on Danny's chest, a trickle of water from his lungs dribbled out of the corner of the detective's mouth. Kono had to wait between compression sets to give a breath to Danny or else she might end up forcing some water back into his lungs.

Steve was hyper-focused on Danny, working in concert with Kono, and was only dimly aware of Chin approaching until the older man spoke.

"Oh, God, Danny," he breathed. "EMS is on the way."

Steve kept up with chest compressions but looked up at Chin just as Kono did the same. Steve saw it in the older detective's eyes and it made him angry.

Kono had paused in her task and jumped visibly when Steve shouted. "Kono, don't stop. He needs air."

Chin looked sadly at the trio. He dropped Steve's gear that he had retrieved from the point never taking his eyes from the distressing scene before him. "Steve..."

Fear, anger, and frustration mingled together in Steve's gut. "He's not gone, Chin. I won't give up on him. Giving up is not an option! Failure is not an option!"

Chin backed away from Steve, moving toward the hill. "I'll go back up top so they know where to come," he said, unable to hide the dejected tone in his voice.

Steve could also hear the despair in her voice when Kono called out to her cousin, "Make sure they bring an AED and oxygen."

"Damn it, Danny, don't you do this. We need you. Grace needs you!" Steve demanded.

Steve continued to administer chest compressions vigorously while Kono kept giving Danny rescue breaths, but Steve could see that she was starting to give up. Danny still lay there on the ground, eyes open, and completely still.

Water had stopped trickling from Danny's mouth as Steve continued CPR, but there was no way in hell Steve would stop. His muscles were quivering, now spent beyond endurance, but Steve simply drew on a deeper reserve, refusing to give in as the voice in his head sounded over and over again.

"_Suck it up, Sailor, and Dig Deep! You will not quit, you will not fail, you will not stop!"_

Steve was moving like a machine, having gone to a place past exhaustion. His brain told his muscles to move and they obeyed. All but the most basic sensations along with his fatigue had been compartmentalized. They were stored away in a hidden room inside the ex-SEAL's mind.

He did not hear the ambulance crew arrive, and climb down the hill with a rescue basket along with their equipment. He didn't hear Chin or Kono telling him to stop. He wasn't consciously aware of the EMT telling him to move aside so he could take over.

The next thing that McGarrett knew was that he was being physically pulled away from Danny by Chin's strong arms.

"Steve, let them work!"

"How long has he been without air?" one of them demanded.

Steve stood mute, too fatigued to form a coherent answer to the question. He heard Chin speaking; he understood the words, even though he was almost completely focused on his lifeless partner.

"It's been at least ten, maybe fifteen minutes."

_That can't be right!_ Steve's mind insisted. Danny couldn't have been under water that long! The serious expressions on the faces of the EMTs made Steve curse Chin for his answer.

The entire scene became oddly detached for Steve. The two EMTs worked quickly with a flurry of activity, one wiping Danny's chest off with a disposable towel before placing AED leads on him while the other covered his mouth and nose with a mask attached to oxygen.

An exasperatingly calm female voice coming from the small AED sitting on the ground next to Danny drew Steve's attention.

"Stand clear. Analyzing rhythm."

Dammit, hurry up! Analyze the damn rhythm, already!

"Administer shock."

Steve clenched his fists at his sides as he watched the shock cause the muscles across Danny's chest to contract. His body jerked as if in spasm. Steve hadn't seen this in real life before now, but it didn't look anything like what one would see on TV with the victim's body arching off the ground which only made it look more like Danny was past the point of no return.

_Was Chin right? Was Danny really gone?_

Steve shook his head to dispel the thought. Danny _wasn't_ gone. He _refused_ to believe that. The AED was speaking again.

"Do not touch patient. Analyzing rhythm. Check for pulse and continue CPR."

No pulse. The EMTs started CPR once again while the Five-0 team stood by, unable to do anything but watch and pray.

"Analyzing rhythm. Administer shock."

An unwanted vision of telling Grace that her Danno was gone flashed through Steve's mind.

Kono placed a hand on his arm. He knew somewhere in the back of his awareness that she could feel the uncontrollable quivering in his taught muscles, but he couldn't bring himself to care as Danny was shocked for a third time.

"Analyzing rhythm." The two EMTs looked up at the three Five-0 detectives standing there. One of them shook his head.

This couldn't be happening, Steve couldn't lose Danny, not now, not like this. "Shock him again."

Chin moved in on Steve. He put his hand on his boss's arm. "Steve, he's gone."

Steve batted the hand away and dropped down next to his partner, pushing the EMT out of the way. "He's **not** gone! Danny, God damn it, you can't be dead!"

Steve leaned over and began chest compressions again.

"Steve! Don't." Chin put a hand on Steve's shoulder. The Five-0 Commander just shook his head. Speaking softly, Chin said, "Steve, you gotta let him go, brah."

Steve wouldn't hear him. "Come on, Danny!" he practically screamed, at his partner. "Grace needs you now!"

Then the impossible happened. Danny's eyes closed.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N -** I have gotten a couple of requests for the next chapter so even though I was planning on waiting until the end of the weekend, here it is.  
Just to let you know - I am **NOT** happy with chapter 5. It needs some _serious_ tweaking. Chapters 6 and 7 are out to the betas and chapters 8 and 9 still need to be written. The final scene is already done however. I did that so it would keep me on track and not allow the story to go off on a tangent. A few of my stories have done that. LOL In any case I hope this chapter will satisfy for now. I need some time to get the next chapter up to par and ready for posting. I can't justify putting a posting out there that doesn't measure up to what you have come to expect.

Once again big huge gigantic kudos to my wonderful beta readers. Also I want to thank all of you who have reviewed this story, and put it on your story alert list or in your favorites file. I am still very new to this fandom and I really appreciate the warm welcome by all of you.

**Chapter Four**

Danny's eyes closed and he began to cough.

"Danny? Danny can you hear me?" Steve stopped the chest compressions, frantically searching the man's face for more signs of life.

The EMT that Steve had pushed past shoved Steve out of the way and grabbed Danny, rolling him on his side as he began to cough harder and harder. Steve stumbled backward and with the help of both his teammates, gained his feet.

Muscles quaking so badly he had difficulty standing, Steve watched as the EMTs brought Danny's legs up at a right angle to his torso to help expel the water from his lungs. Foamy water tinged with blood flowed from the man's mouth, his entire body convulsing with the violence of his coughing.

It was the most wonderful sound that Steve had ever heard.

The EMT on the other side of Danny held his head while he continued to cough viciously and then he threw up.

_So much for that record, partner._

After another minute Danny's body went limp and his head lolled in the man's hands as he shallowly panted as though he had run a marathon. Even though Steve knew somewhere in the back of his mind that this wasn't unusual behavior for a drowning victim, he shuddered when Danny went limp. As much for the physical support as emotional, Steve wrapped his long arms around the shoulders of his teammates as the medical personnel finally rolled Danny onto his back.

Steve felt sick; the violent coughing had caused the laceration on Danny's left temple to bleed profusely and now the left side of his face and ear were covered in bright red blood.

That didn't phase the EMTs. "Danny, can you open your eyes for me? Doug, grab some gauze to get that lac dealt with."

Steve started to tense back up, only realizing it when Kono uttered a distinctly audible wince when her boss's hand squeezed her shoulder tightly enough to leave a mark.

_Why isn't Danny waking up? He's breathing and the AED shows a steady heart beat._

Once again a voice in the back of Steve's mind told him that it wasn't unusual for his partner to be unconscious at this point, but the emotional stress of the event overrode that small voice. All Steve could think about was the fact that Danny's eyes remained stubbornly closed and he wouldn't respond to all the prodding.

"Get the mask on him and turn the oxygen up on full." The technician closest to Steve instructed. He looked down and noticed that Danny's left hand was also covered in blood. "We have another deep laceration on his left hand. Doug, hand me that C-collar."

The EMTs now had a live patient to save, and they went to work feverishly. Steve and company found that they needed to back up a little further to give them room to work.

Doug handed the cervical collar to his partner then wiped off the excess blood from Danny's face and applied a quick bandage to the laceration on his temple before also wrapping his left hand. Once the collar was in place Doug's partner got an IV started in his right arm and began giving him fluids and drugs.

Once Danny's injuries were stabilized the EMTs transferred him to the rescue basket and with the help of Steve and Chin at the back the four men carried Danny up the hill to the waiting ambulance.

Steve and the others tried to get closer to see Danny, but were held back by the one called Doug. "Sorry, no room for a passenger."

"Hang in there, Brah, you're gonna be okay," Chin called out to Danny before the doors closed.

Steve couldn't seem to form coherent words. He tried several times to say something but nothing seemed to come out. He didn't know what to do for a moment. The suspect was gone, Danny had died for all intents and purposes for several minutes, and only by the grace of God, or maybe by invoking his daughter Grace's name, was now alive and breathing.

Suddenly everything that had happened over the last few months came crashing down on Steve. The voice of Chief Hollister had gone silent. Now he heard his father's voice.

"_When he was five years old, I asked my son, Steve, what he wanted to be when he grew up."_

"_I wanna be a cop, Dad, like you."_

"_I told him to be anything but that._

"_The life of a cop, it's not easy. It's not that I'm not proud of the work that I did, but more than anything, I have regrets. _

"_The toll that it took on my family; the way that it hurt them; it's something I think about everyday. Now I'm a... I'm alone here."_

Steve turned away from the ambulance, staring out at the ocean. "He was right."

Steve didn't even realize he had spoken aloud until Chin stepped up beside him. "Who was right?"

"This job, all of it. Dad was right. I should never have accepted the Governor's position."

Chin and Kono exchanged worried looks. Steve ignored them and walked away back toward the steep hill leading down to the beach.

_I'm a SEAL. I'm trained to deal with stress. Dad's murder, Mom's murder, Nick's betrayal, Victor Hesse, Chin, Mary, Danny. God! Danny, you died. This isn't just the stress of the job, it's personal, it's more than... I can't..._

Steve's thoughts drove him forward as he half stumbled, half climbed down the hill. He heard Chin calling his name in alarm.

"Steve!" Chin shouted. Steve didn't answer him. "Go after him, cuz, I'll be right back."

Steve ignored the voice. His head was pounding, he was shivering uncontrollably, his thoughts were jumbled together in a kaleidoscope of pain, regrets, and dreadful images. His father's funeral. Mary's black-and-blue face. Chin kneeling in front of the palace with explosives strapped around his neck.

Danny's lifeless body.

Steve felt like he was going to explode, and before he realized it, he was standing at the spot where Danny had laid. Between the arduous task of diving into the cove and finding Danny, rescuing him while fighting the powerful current, and preforming continuous CPR, the Five-0 Commander had pushed his body past its limit of endurance.

His legs gave out under him and he dropped heavily to his knees. Kono reached the bottom of the hill just as Steve went down and ran over to him, kneeling down next to her boss.

Steve looked down at the rocky surface of the beach and saw Danny's green tie laying there. He reached out and picked it up just as the Chin arrived, squatting down on the other side of the Commander. Steve's whole body was shaking as he turned the tie over in his hands and saw the pattern of red at the bottom.

Those red dots, correction, _Christmas ornaments_ must have been the flash of red he had seen fluttering in the darkness of the cave. Somehow a faint amount of light had reflected off of those God awful ornaments and drew his attention. How the tie had ended up on the outside of the water logged vest was a mystery, but in the powerful currents anything was possible.

"I've always given him a hard time about these things, but it was this..." Steve said, emphatically as he held the tie up in a shaking hand "...that saved his life. This stupid ridiculous piece of fabric."

Kono looked at Chin and said, in a quiet voice "He's not making any sense."

"He's going into shock."

Chin moved around so that he was directly in front of Steve. Some part of Steve's mind calmly cataloged what was happening. He looked up into the older man's eyes and saw the concern there. That calm part of the Commander's mind knew he was in trouble and Chin knew it too.

"Danny always said this island would kill him." That small voice came to Steve again telling him he was rambling, but the SEAL couldn't seem to stop it.

Chin grabbed Steve's shoulders and shook him slightly. "Steve, Danny's not dead. He's alive. You saved him."

That calm and analytical part of Steve's psyche knew the symptoms his body was displaying. He was shaking badly, and his breathing was fast and shallow. Chin pulled Steve's soaked shirt up over his head and he didn't fight it, knowing and not caring that his lack of concern would worry Chin more than fighting.

The older detective handed the sodden shirt to Kono, and grabbed the blanket he must have gotten from the back of his vehicle. He was about to wrap it around Steve's shoulder when he stopped and looked at Steve's side. "What happened here?" he asked as he reached out and touched Steve's side.

Steve winced and tightened his muscles at Chin's touch. He looked down at himself and saw a large ugly bruise on the left side of his ribcage. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing; he tried to think where he had gotten the injury, but he couldn't sort out his thoughts. Chin wrapped the blanket around Steve's shoulders, then reached for a SCUBA tank and regulator that he must have also brought down from the back of his truck.

"Steve, listen to me; you're exhausted and going into shock. You went without oxygen for too long. Your blood pressure is bottoming out, Brah."

Steve's mind automatically went back to his SEAL training.

_Cold water rescue: Oxygen deprivation will allow lactic acid to build up in the muscles, causing them to tremble and weaken.__ To further complicate any cold water rescue situation, a decrease in body temperature will dilate the vasculature, causing a dangerous drop in blood pressure. This will lead to light headedness, and confusion._

"You need some oxygen. All I've got is my SCUBA tank, so I want you to take a few hits off of this, okay? What we really need to do is get you to the hospital."

Steve stared at Chin for a second, trying to process what the older man had said. His mind felt muddled and a little cloudy. Danny wasn't dead; he knew that. He felt light headed and off kilter so he must be going into shock.

_Wait, didn't I already do that? Why is it so hard to think?_

Chin held the regulator out to him and Steve blinked twice before he could wrap his conscious mind around the fact that Chin wanted him to put the regulator into his mouth. He wasn't underwater, but he trusted the older detective and complied.

The removal of his soaked shirt, the warmth of the blanket, and oxygen helped bring him back to himself. Steve took several deep breaths through the regulator. After a few more minutes he took the regulator out of his mouth and took a couple of deep breaths on his own. It felt as though he were breathing for the first time in weeks, even though he felt an uncomfortable tightness in his chest.

Steve looked down and saw that he was still holding Danny's tie. He squeezed his hand tightly around the limp fabric and closed his eyes for a moment as the image of Danny lying utterly lifeless flashed across his mind. He shoved the tie in his pocket and with it filed away the image of Danny in a hidden corner of his mind.

He looked back up at the cousins sitting there watching him closely. His head was clearer, his emotions were coming back under tighter control. His training was kicking in and taking over.

"Thanks, Chin, I needed that. This isn't over, we have to get divers out to that cave to look for Kalawai's body. I don't think he's dead, though. We need to figure out how he would get to the calmer water of the bay and then figure out where he is going."

Chin had another priority. "You are not going anywhere except to the hospital."

_Not getting the point._

"He needs closure, Chin," Steve insisted. "Danny deserves that. I don't want Kalawai turning up in a couple of months like Hesse did. I have to finish this for Danny. I owe him that."

Chin had clearly heard enough. He stood up, and with Kono's help pulled Steve to his feet. "Lt. Commander McGarrett. You are to report to the hospital on the double. Is that clear, sailor?"

Steve wanted to argue with Chin, but a brief wave of dizziness hit him. He was able to keep from swaying - at least he thought so - but wasn't entirely sure when Chin's hand shot out to grab his arm. Almost as if to cover the momentary weakness, Steve forced himself to stand up straight, coercing his over-taxed body to obey. He saluted, hoping that Chin didn't notice the tremors running up his arm. "Yes, sir."

Chin wasn't fooled and looked to his cousin. "Kono, go with him. I'll coordinate the divers. Take my truck. I'm not sure the Camaro's drivable at this point."

As Kono and Steve turned to leave, Steve looked back at Chin with sharper eyes and a clearer head than he had possessed a few minutes before. "Hey, I thought I was the boss."

"Oh, you are, Brah, but right now you need to follow orders." Chin replied, with a wide grin.

Steve just shook his head. He knew Chin was probably right, but he had priorities: too many of them, all important. He wanted to stay here and find Kalawai; he wanted to go to the hospital and see how Danny was doing; he wanted to sit down for twenty minutes and rest. Finally his body ended the internal struggle for him. The ex-SEAL grudgingly had to admit to himself that he needed to get checked out, if only for the reason it would give him an opportunity to rest for a few minutes. They would let him rest at the hospital. He needed dry clothes, he thought absently, as the wind picked up and sent a chill down his spine, and more importantly he needed to see how Danny was doing.

Steve was still very shaky, but made it to the top of the hill without incident and walked over to Chin's SUV. When he made to walk to the driver's side Kono moved quickly to cut him off.

"Not a chance, Brah. You're riding shotgun today."

Steve was so tired he didn't even attempt to argue with her, and simply turned toward the passenger side of the vehicle.

* * *

Waianae Coast Comprehensive Center was the only ER on this side of the island and luckily it was only about half a mile down Pokai Bay Road where it met the Farrington Highway. Steve drifted in and out of a light doze as Kono maneuvered the truck back out onto the road. He was exceptionally tired, which bothered him. His chest still felt a little tight, but it has eased up considerably, even if the soreness in his left side continued to ache with each breath he took. This was not the kind of physical condition he was used to being in. Life at home had allowed him to become soft.

It was true that the water rescue would have been next to impossible for Chin, Kono, or Danny for that matter, but none of them were highly trained Navy SEALs who were expected to function at a higher level of strenuous activity. Yes, he decided, he was definitely getting soft.

Kono made sure to flash her police badge once she got Steve up to the ER intake desk. The way she fussed over him told Steve that she was still concerned about him.

_Danny's the one you should be focusing your concern on, Kono_ Steve thought ruefully. Steve may not have been a trained police officer like Danny, but he didn't miss much, like the way the receptionist eyed him with what looked like irritation.

_Well, McGarrett, you can't blame her can you? You're standing here, bare chested, with a blanket over your shoulders, and soaking wet from the waist down getting her ER waiting room floor all wet._

It didn't take long for Steve to be brought back to an examination room. If he had been looking for an opportunity to rest he had come to the wrong place.

Before long he was hooked up to a heart monitor, had an EKG done, had something called a pulse-ox attached to his finger, was hooked up to an oxygen mask, had a bag of IV fluid running into the back of one hand, and had a blood pressure cuff, that inflated every few minutes, wrapped around his bicep. Steve laid his head back on the raised head of the stretcher and closed his eyes for a moment, not noticing the middle aged woman who stepped into the examination room pushing a wheelchair until she called out his name.

"Mr. McGarrett?"

Steve's eyes snapped open and he took a moment to focus on the woman.

"My name is Alice. I'm one of the X-ray techs here. I'm going to take you over to my department and we are going to do a chest x-ray and get some pictures of your ribs on the left."

She began to detach all the equipment that Steve had been hooked up to. The last thing, however, the Commander wanted to do was to get hauled around in a wheelchair. As soon as she had him completely unhooked he swung his legs over the side of the stretcher and hopped down, only to have his knees begin to buckle under him. Alice was at his side in an instant, taking a firm hold of his left arm.

"Hold on there, Brah. You're a lively one then aren't you?"

Steve felt a little embarrassed and stood up straight, fighting off the light headed sensation he was feeling. "I can walk," he declared firmly.

"I'm sure you can, but you need to have a seat in the chair anyway." Steve gave her his most stubborn look, but she wasn't swayed. "Those are the rules, sir, and you wouldn't want to get me into trouble would you?"

Steve didn't know if what this woman told him was true, or if she had simply thought of the one persuasion that would get him to comply. He didn't want to be difficult and get Alice into trouble, after all she was only doing her job, so he sat down in the chair and did as he was told. He was sure he saw a smirk on Kono's face as he was wheeled out of the room.

The x-rays only took a few minutes, but Steve was regretting going with the tech by the time she was wheeling him back to the ER. He would never admit it aloud, but he was thankful for the chair on the return trip. Having to take deep breaths and hold them made him feel very dizzy, and it caused sharp pain in his left side. When he finally climbed back up onto the stretcher in the examination room his nurse was back, and busied herself with hooking him back up to all the monitors. She watched as the blood pressure cuff inflated and wrote the numbers down on a yellow form. "I need to lay you down now, Steve."

All of the different people hooking him up to these monitors and other contraptions were starting to seriously irritate the SEAL. If he couldn't rest peacefully for a few minutes, then he wanted to concentrate on his second priority. Steve tried to speak in a calm voice, but he wasn't sure he pulled that off.

"I don't want to lie down, I want to find my partner and see how he's doing."

"Mr. McGarrett, your blood pressure is a little low for a young healthy man like yourself so I need you to lie down flat for me for a little while. I don't know about your partner."

The woman wasn't going to give an inch if he tried to force the issue. Steve had options. He could get up off the stretcher, go look for Danny, and risk falling flat on his face within three steps. Option two; he could lie there, hoping the pain in his ribs would go away, and try to charm the nurse into doing his bidding. It didn't take much thought on the Commander's part, option two it is. "I know you're just trying to do your job, but could you please go find out about Detective Danny Williams?"

"I'll see what I can do. You stay put. The doctor will be in to see you in a little bit."

The doctor, however, was not the next person to come into the examination room to see Steve; it was a harried looking lab technician named Cinnamon, who took half a dozen vials of his blood. By this time Steve was getting even more irritated, and was ready to bite someone's head off when the nurse came back in.

"Mr. McGarrett, I need to take your blood pressure a couple of times. I have a reading for lying down, so what I need you to do is to sit up for me on the edge of the bed."

Steve took a breath and kept his voice as calm and measured as he could. "Is all of this really necessary?"

"I'm afraid it is. I know you are anxious to get out of here, so let's just get through these examinations so that you can, shall we?"

When the nurse asked him to stand on the floor next to the bed a wave of dizziness wafted over Steve.

_Crap now they will try to keep me here longer. I wonder if she noticed?_

The nurse watched as the screen told her what the blood pressure reading was. "Okay, your pressure dropped pretty quickly just then, so you need to lie down again."

_I guess that answers that question._

Steve was fast approaching anger, but he didn't want to antagonize the person who could push things along, so he complied. As soon as she stepped out of the room he sat back up, not really caring about lying down and blood pressure or anything else. Kono, who had been asked to step out, peeked her head back in when the nurse left.

"Have you found out anything about Danny?" Steve asked her, for the third time.

Kono looked just as worried as Steve obviously felt. "I've asked the nurses several times, but no one seems to know anything."

A tall slender man wearing a stethoscope around his neck and had a long white lab coat stepped up behind Kono. "You can come in if you would like."

Kono stepped inside the cubicle and moved off to the side so that the man could take a seat on a short rolling stool situated near the side of the stretcher that Steve was sitting on.

"I'm Doctor Hanna," he said as he opened the chart he had brought in with him.

Steve would get answers from this man and he wasn't going to take 'I don't know' for an answer. "Look, Doc, my partner was brought in a little while ago and I can't get any information about him. Can you please tell me what's going on?"

The doctor looked up from the chart he was holding perplexed. "What is your partner's name?"

"Daniel Williams. He's a drowning victim."

The doctor looked back at Steve surprised. "We don't have a drowning victim here, but I think I may be able to give you some information. Before I look into that, however, I want to discuss your symptoms. Your X-rays were good. You didn't break any ribs, but you did seriously bruise them. You will be extremely sore for the next few days. How did you sustain that injury?"

Steve looked at Kono and saw that she was watching him closely. That confused him for a moment until he remembered that Chin had asked about the injury earlier, but he was too out of it to answer.

"My partner and I were trying to apprehend a suspect. He drew a gun on us and fired. My partner tackled me to push me out of the way and I fell over a front porch railing and fell about five feet to the ground." Steve looked more carefully at the deep blue and purple bruising along his left rib cage. The bruise was horizontal and slender. "I think this is where I hit the railing. I didn't even realize that it was there until it was pointed out to me."

The doctor nodded his head and looked at the chart he was holding. Steve recognized the yellow sheet that the nurse had used earlier when she was recording his blood pressure. "Your blood pressure dropped sharply when you stood up. That's called orthostatic hypotension. Now, it is my understanding that you went without oxygen for a period of time. You rescued a drowning victim; I am assuming that would have been your partner?"

"Yes, he was pushed from a cliff into Pokai Point cove by a suspect that we were apprehending."

The doctor raised his eyebrows, but made no comment about how his patient had landed in this situation. "So can you tell me how long you had to hold your breath during this rescue?"

"I don't know exactly. Less than six minutes ten seconds. That is the longest I ever held my breath during SEAL training."

The doctor looked skeptical. "Seriously?"

Steve just looked at the doctor with an impatient glare.

"During the time you held your breath you were working very hard. Once you surfaced you had to work against the currents in the cove."

At the surprised look on Steve's face the doctor said, "I've done my own share of diving in the cove at Pokai Point. My point is, between your underwater rescue and then having to swim to shore towing a full grown unresponsive man, you engaged in extended strenuous activity. The adrenaline and the physical activity kept your blood pressure high while you were exercising. However, if you stop exercising suddenly, your heart slows down, decreasing blood circulation and making your blood pressure fall. Couple that with oxygen deprivation and you end up in a state of orthostatic hypotension, which is what we are seeing here."

"Okay, Doc, I understand all of that, well sort of. So I'm fine now. I've had some fluid, some oxygen, and some rest. Now I want to know about my partner."

The doctor sighed and gave Steve a hard stare. "It isn't quite that simple, Commander. Your body will only take so much before it will force you to rest. I am aware that you are in peak physical condition and that is the only reason that you fared so well given your activities over the last few hours."

Steve was seriously losing his patience with everyone, but once again he drew on an inner reserve to marshall up patience. "You're probably right, Doc. It has been a monumentally difficult afternoon. I will pay attention to any symptoms that are troublesome and act accordingly, but you have to understand that, right now, I need to find out about my partner."

"Fair enough." The doctor stated, obviously knowing that he would not get much further with the stubborn man. "I know that a call came in about a drowning victim, but I didn't take it. I believe that your partner was diverted to another facility. If you give me a few minutes I'll check into it, and let you know what I can find out." He stood quickly left the room.

Steve decided that he was all done waiting. He sat up and yanked the monitor leads off his chest and pulled out the IV tubing. A spot of blood welled up on his arm, and he grabbed a piece of gauze from the stand beside him to soak up the mess. "Kono, there is a cart just outside the room with some scrubs on it. Go grab me a shirt, would you?"

Kono had worked long enough with Steve to know that she wouldn't sway him from leaving, now that he knew Danny was somewhere else, short of decking him. Steve didn't think that his rookie was up for that level of insubordination.

When she came back it was with not only a shirt but some scrub pants as well, since Steve's were still wet. She turned her back to give him some privacy. By the time the Commander finished changing the doctor came back to see him.

"Did you not hear anything I told you just now? Commander, you need to stay on the monitor for a little while longer, and you need those IV fluids. Your body is recovering from shock, and hypotension. Your oxygen levels are not bad, but I'm..."

Steve interrupted him asking, "What did you find out about my partner?"

The doctor sighed in defeat. "He wasn't brought here, because he was in pretty bad shape. He was diverted to Hawaii Medical Center West. They are a level three trauma unit and are better equipped to handle drownings as serious as your partner's. He was without oxygen for an extended period of time according to the ambulance crew who were transporting him."

Steve nodded to the doctor and turned to Kono. "Call Chin and tell him we're headed to Honolulu. Sorry, Doc, but I feel fine and I need to get to my partner." With that Steve grabbed up his wet pants and he and Kono headed for the door.

TBC

**A/N -** The x-ray tech is me. Yeah I know you aren't really supposed to put yourself into the story, but I am an x-ray tech and that interaction with Steve was reminiscent with an encounter I had with a patient not unlike out favorite Commander just a few weeks ago. My patient wasn't a Navy SEAL and no where near as easy on the eyes, but he was a young man who had broken a few ribs after riding one of those bull things in a local bar and insisted he was fine. He was a nice enough fellow, but he wanted to walk and was trying to be stubborn about it. The only problem was he would have fallen flat on his face if I allowed him to do so. My solution worked because it appealed to his sense of chivalry. He didn't want me to get into trouble for "breaking the rules". If that hadn't worked I would have just used my "mommy" voice. I usually only pull that out for the cantankerous patients with flippant or nasty attitudes.

Also that six minutes ten seconds that Steve said he held his breath during SEAL training came from an ex Navy SEAL. That was the longest he had held his breath so I used that figure.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N -** Thank you all for the reviews, story alerts, and favorites listings. It's great to know that you are all liking the story. Thank you again for your patience in waiting for this chapter. It required a quasi-major re-write, but ultimately I think it was worth the wait. I hope you agree.  
Okay - broken record time: Big shout out and many Kudos to my betas - Oughtaknowbetter, Fraidycat, and Faye Dartmouth. These ladies put up with a lot from me, and I very much appreciate all their hard work.

**Chapter Five**

Kono may have been a rookie, but she was no slouch. She found herself fascinated by the varied life of her Commander, and had done a little research on Navy SEAL training. It didn't surprise her that he had been trained to deal with bone-crushing fatigue without stopping, or enormous levels of stress while remaining calm. She knew full well that these men were forced to endure prolonged strenuous activity and keep moving. Her research didn't yield a lot of concrete evidence as the exact nature of SEAL training, and many of her assumptions were just that; assumptions.

She realized that she could be completely wrong about the kind of training that Steve had gone through as a SEAL, but after working for six months with a man who behaved more like an invincible superhero than a regular man, Kono felt that her assumptions were, at the very least, not completely off the mark. She watched Steve closely as they walked out of the Waianae Comprehensive Care Center. Rookie or not, she still possessed keen observational skills, and could tell that her boss was using his considerable skills and training to appear at ease even though it was clear that gravity pulled on his battered body, and skewed equilibrium threatened to compromise his footing.

Doctor Hanna was concerned with good reason. In any other situation Kono hoped that Steve would have stayed and done as he was told, but not now; not when his partner needed him. She watched as the Commander walked with determination toward the black SUV.

"I'll drive," he said, as he held out his hand for the keys.

Kono looked at Steve trying to gauge what to say to him.

"Should I make that an order?" he tried, as they walked up to the vehicle.

Kono stopped as they came to the SUV, and looked at him for a moment with a measuring stare. "You can, if it makes you feel better," she replied, then turned and hopped up into the driver's seat.

As Kono pulled out onto the highway, she couldn't help but notice that Steve's breathing pattern had changed. He didn't sound like he was in distress, but he had an intense look of concentration on his face as he took in slow deep breaths that must have caused his bruised ribs to ache painfully. Small beads of sweat appeared along his forehead at the hairline as he continued, making Kono nervous and uncertain.

"You okay, boss?"

Steve didn't seem to hear her, so she reached over and touched his arm lightly. "Boss? You okay? You want me to go back?"

That got the Commander's attention. "No, I'm fine. It's just a breathing exercise," Steve replied, in a clipped tone.

Kono wasn't sure she believed him. She remembered the bruising on his side and was surprised that he only had _bruised_ ribs. She would have bet anything that they had been broken, but she figured she couldn't argue with an x-ray. Broken, or bruised; there was no way that he wasn't feeling intense pain, and yet he kept on going.

"How do you do it?"

The question obviously took the Commander off-guard. "Do what?" he asked, utterly perplexed.

Kono glanced over at him before turning her eyes back to the road. His tone, as well as the confused frown on his face, told her that he had no idea what she meant. She couldn't help thinking that for a highly trained SEAL, he sometimes seemed so completely clueless. She was about to answer him, when she had to turn the wheel sharply to the right to avoid a semi pulling out of the waste plant on the left side of the road. She looked sheepishly over at her boss who was holding onto the hand grip and looking a little pale. "Sorry, boss."

Steve just raised his eyebrows. "I can tell you from experience that Danny would be in full rant mode by now. So what is it you don't get?"

"Your ribs are badly bruised. You jumped into treacherous waters, dove into an underwater cave saving Danny by getting him back to shore while fighting ridiculous currents. You performed continuous CPR for the longest time, and you just keep going. I saw the bruising on your side. That has to hurt like hell, but you'd never know it. So, yeah, how do you do it?"

She looked over at Steve genuinely interested in his answer. She might never openly admit it to him, but she envied his endurance, and his ability to shrug off pain. If she could have done that, then she might have been able to continue her surfing career a little longer. Steve seemed to be considering his answer, so she waited patiently. She didn't have to wait long.

"When I was in SEAL training I met a fellow SEAL named Milton Breuberry. He had an interesting way of looking at things. He was, without a doubt, the most tenacious person I've ever met."

"How's that?" Kono asked.

With a quirk of his mouth Steve continued. "He took more punishment than any other recruit I had ever seen, and it never slowed him down, not even a little. I watched him scale a wall with a dislocated shoulder. I saw him run through one of the hardest obstacle courses that we had, in record time, with four broken ribs. It was almost like he couldn't feel pain."

Kono's eyes opened wide. "Is that part of the SEAL training?"

Steve snorted. "Hardly. I asked him once how he did it. Just like you are asking me. He told me that he felt pain just like anyone else, but he treated it differently than most people do. He didn't try to ignore it, he didn't try to pretend it didn't exist, or compartmentalize it the way we were taught in SEAL training. Milt told me that he allowed himself to _'feel'_ his pain. He said he would allow it to wash over him and run through him until he became completely familiar with it. He believed that only by embracing pain, and welcoming it, would he truly become accustomed to it."

Kono was very surprised to hear this. "So he ignored the training that you were given in the SEALs?"

Steve shook his head. "No, well not exactly. Milt believed in the training, we all did, but he had a sister who taught him about pain management when he was younger, before he joined the SEALs."

"Was she in the military too?"

Steve looked out the front windshield as if seeing something far distant. "Not at all. She had some kind of congenital condition that caused her incredible pain, but she refused to live her life in a pain medication induced fog. She simply accepted the pain as a normal part of her life. She became accustomed to it, and by doing that she was able to manage it."

Kono was impressed. She knew fellow surfers who had withered under the pain of bad accidents. She was pulled from her musings as Steve continued to speak.

"Milt said that she was able to walk with those crutches that fit around your forearms. The thing is, the doctors told her that all she would be able to do is stand and pivot from a wheelchair to get from one place to another, but she refused to be confined to a wheelchair."

"Good for her," Kono said, with feeling. She admired a fighter.

"Milt practiced what his sister taught him, and through that, he was able to allow any pain he felt to become something that existed in the background. He taught me the same technique. I never mastered it with the same success as Milt or his sister, but I did well enough. It has proved to be very helpful in difficult situations."

Kono nodded with the explanation. "You'll have to teach me this technique someday."

Steve smiled tightly as she swerved once again to get around a slow moving vehicle. Conversation ceased for the rest of the trip as they flew down the highway toward Honolulu. More than once Kono spied Steve white-knuckling the hand grip, but she was unsure if it had to do with her driving or his _'pain management'_ technique.

* * *

Steve had never really been awake and alert in a car with Kono driving before, and found himself channeling his partner for the twenty-some miles back to city. Although he would never show it outwardly, Steve was glad to be able to step out of the vehicle and place his feet on terra firma.

"This must be how Danny feels," the SEAL muttered under his breath. He suspected that Kono had heard him, considering the smirk on her face as she came around the front of the vehicle.

When the two Five-0 detectives walked up to the ER front desk all traces of humor had left their faces. Steve showed the registrar his badge, and told her that he needed to see detective Danny Williams immediately. The woman behind the counter seemed a little taken aback to see the tall, and serious looking officer standing there in front of her wearing ill-fitting scrubs. Her surprise was clearly conveyed by her eyes sweeping from the top of the Commander to his feet.

Steve glanced down at himself wondering what the woman found so fascinating. Noticing the scrubs he shrugged and said, "My clothes were wet."

She smiled up at the man and nodded before getting up and walking through the door behind her desk that lead into the ER. A few minutes later, to Steve's utter shock, a white-faced Rachel came out through the ER doors, walked right up, and punched him square in the chest.

"Where the _hell_ have you been? You are his partner, aren't you? You are supposed to stay with your partner, or have I been misinformed all of these years as to how this works? How could you let this happen?"

That question drove straight through Steve's heart. Rachel punched him again, and Steve instinctively reached out and embraced her. Her reaction sent a deep fear through him, but he held his emotion at bay long enough for Danny's ex to calm down. When Rachel pushed herself away from the Commander, she stood back and looked at him again and finally seemed to notice what he was wearing.

"What is this all about?" she said, pointing at his outfit. "Why are you dressed like that?"

Steve shrugged off her question, being far more concerned with why she was here and why she was so upset. "My clothes were wet. Rachel, why are you here? Who called you, and what is happening with Danny?"

"Who called me? _Who called me?_ Bloody HPD called me! I can't believe this is happening. I'm not even married to Danny anymore, and I still get a call telling me that he has drowned! When he was brought here, there wasn't anyone with him. They knew he was a police officer so the hospital contacted the department, who in turn, called me to ask if I could come down to the hospital. The doctors needed information and someone to sign papers and watch as they shoved tubes into his throat!"

Rachel was pacing, and ranting not unlike Steve had seen Danny do. The prim and reserved woman he had first met completely disappeared, to be replaced with a female version of Danny.

"Okay, I didn't actually watch them do that, but that is hardly the point! They asked me about a living will and organ donation! I asked where you were, but no one knew. No one had any idea what had happened, or how long he was under water..."

Steve paled considerably as Rachel spoke and grabbed her rather unexpectedly, which in turn, caused her to stop speaking. "Living will? Organ donation? What happened, Rachel? Why is he on life support?"

The desperation in Steve's voice held her up for a moment, and the pieces clicked together. "You are the one who pulled him out of the water! That's why you're wearing that ridiculous costume. Why didn't you come with him to the hospital? How in God's name did he end up in the ocean in the first place?"

Steve could see that Rachel was almost beside herself, and this conversation wasn't going anywhere fast. He took her by the arm and led her to a row of chairs in the ER waiting area.

"Rachel, we found out who killed Juliette, and were in the process of apprehending him."

Rachel's eyes opened wide. "You found him?"

"Yes. He ran out to the end of the point at Pokai Bay where he surrendered. Rachel, I'm so sorry, this is all my fault. I should have seen this coming, I should have known what this guy was gonna do. The guy wanted to get away, so he clocked Danny, grabbed him, and dove off the cliff."

Rachel's eyes grew wide in horror. "But... No, that doesn't makes sense. Danny can swim - how did he drown?"

"The water out at the point is treacherous. Kalawai, the killer, he pushed Danny under. Danny was wearing his bulletproof vest, and that's heavy. Danny may know how to swim, but not in those kinds of currents, and not wearing that kind of weight, fully clothed."

"What about you? You're a Navy SEAL aren't you?"

Steve felt guilt rip at his soul. "I dove in after them, and I tried to get to him, Rachel, I really did. The vest weighed him down and he was having trouble keeping his head above the water. The tide was coming in, and he was washed up against the cliff face and got knocked out. I dove after him but he was washed into a cave at the base of the cliff. I did finally get to him, but I had to find him first. It took time, time Danny didn't have."

Steve had to stop for a moment as the emotions he had managed to bottle up resurfaced with a vengeance and threatened to strip him of his composure. "The ambulance arrived, and they got Danny breathing again, they got his heart started. I would have come with him, but the EMTs wouldn't let anyone else ride in the ambulance. Kono took me to the only ER out there, but we didn't realize until later that Danny was brought here rather than the ER in Waianae. As soon as we found out, we left and got here as fast as we could."

Rachel sat listening to this story just taking it all in. Steve couldn't read her expression. "Why were you taken to the hospital?"

Kono who had taken a seat on the other side of her boss had apparently decided that it was time to set a few things straight judging by the challenge in her voice. "Steve was in shock and was suffering from oxygen deprivation. He nearly died himself, saving Danny's life. Even if I had known that Danny was brought here, I still would have taken Steve to the ER close by, because he needed medical attention right away. The only reason Danny was brought here, is because this place is better equipped to deal with his injuries."

Steve had told Rachel everything, now it was time that she told him what he needed to know. "Rachel, you said they put a tube down Danny's throat; life support. Why? What happened? He was breathing when the ambulance left with him."

The woman looked down at her hands as though trying to keep herself under control. "Apparently he went without oxygen for too long. The doctors said they wanted to put him on a respirator to get oxygen to his brain, or something like that. I had a little trouble following what was being said after I heard that. They are going to move him to a room as soon as he comes back from getting x-rays; a CT scan I think they said."

The desperation in her voice was clear. She looked up at Steve and he internally winced when he saw the tears that fell down her cheeks.

"Danny and I may have our differences, but he is still my daughter's father. I don't know what I'm going to tell Grace. She is already terrified because of what happened to Juliette."

"Where is your husband?" Steve asked, wondering if Stan would be available to take care of Grace while Rachel stayed here at the hospital with Danny.

"Stan is away on business at the moment. He should be back sometime tomorrow." She looked down and seemed reluctant to say anything else on the subject then she looked back up at Steve. "This man, this Kalawai, where is he now?"

"I don't know, but my instinct tells me he survived. He knew those waters and he ran straight for the point. I think he may have dived there as a kid, and maybe even knew about the cave. We have divers looking for him now. I promise you, we will find him, dead or alive, we will find him."

The doors that led into the main ER department slid open and a doctor stepped out scanning the waiting area. When he spotted Rachel he came over to the trio. "Mrs. Edwards, we are ready to move Detective Williams up to the ICU."

Rachel stood up and said, "Doctor Hallstrom, this is Daniel's partner, Lt. Commander McGarrett. He can answer all of those questions you had earlier. He's the one who pulled Daniel out of the water."

Rachel turned to Steve and hesitated for a moment, then she pulled out a small card from her purse and a pen, and quickly scribbled something on the card. "This is my cell number. Please let me know how he is doing. I'm sorry; I have to go now. I have to get Grace."

Rachel backed away looking upset and torn, but she also had a distinct air of someone escaping. Now that Danny's team was here she was off the hook, so to speak; at least that is the impression that Steve got at her hasty withdrawal.

Steve could understand why Rachel wanted to flee. After all, she had left the marriage because of the fear of facing this very thing, but a part of him couldn't understand how she could abandon Danny when he needed her the most. He dismissed the thought from his mind, and turned to the doctor. "Rachel tried to tell me what happened when Danny got here, but she wasn't very clear."

The doctor could obviously feel the awkward tension hanging in the air after Rachel's abrupt departure. "Why don't you come to my office where we can talk?"

Steve and Kono followed the doctor through the ER to a small office situated near the back of the department. Once inside, Dr. Hallstrom closed the door and took a seat at a cluttered desk.

"When your partner was brought in, I was told he had been without oxygen for an extended period of time. Now what that means is anything over six minutes. From what I was told he wasn't breathing for at least fifteen minutes. Does that sound right?"

Steve shook his head. "I don't think it was that long. Chin called for an ambulance as soon as he went into the water," Steve said, looking at Kono for confirmation. At her nod he continued. "He was able to stay above water for a little while until he was knocked out when the tide threw him up against the cliff face. Between getting hit against the rock wall, and the weight of his vest he went under. I dove under the water as soon as he went down trying to swim for him, but the current carried him away from me. I had to come up for air and went back down. The current washed him into an underwater cave. I swam in looking for him, grabbed him, and then made my way back to the surface. I'm not sure how long it took me to get him back to shore once we came up. Kono?"

Kono picked up the tale from that point. "It took at least four to five minutes from the time you surfaced to get close enough for me to help you pull him out of the water. Once we had him on shore we started rescue breathing and CPR right away. Then the EMTs showed up, but I don't know how long that was after we started CPR."

Dr. Hollstrom was writing things down as the two spoke. "So you only came up for air once during the rescue?" he asked, Steve.

The Commander nodded, and the doctor continued. "So it couldn't have been fifteen minutes."

"No it was more like eight to ten minutes from the time Danny went under to the time Steve got him on shore and we started trying to resuscitate him." Kono said, with certainty.

The doctor, however, looked very uncertain about that estimation. "Let's say that it was ten minutes from the time Detective Williams went underwater to the time you began rescue breathing and CPR. Take off a full five minutes to accommodate the time it took Commander McGarrett to get him to shore after resurfacing. That would mean that with only coming up for air once, you would have had to hold your breath for nearly five minutes while engaging in the extremely strenuous activity of rescuing a drowning victim in powerful currents. How is that even possible?"

Steve and Kono exchanged a look. Steve tried to convey that she should just let it drop, but the young detective wasn't biting. "That would be why Commander McGarrett was in shock and needed to be treated for oxygen deprivation. That's why we weren't here when Danny was brought in. We didn't know until later that he had been shipped here instead of to Waianae Coast Comprehensive Center where I took Steve to get checked out."

Dr. Hallstrom looked critically at Steve after hearing this. "WCCC released you that soon after suffering oxygen deprivation and shock?"

Steve had the decency to look slightly abashed. "Not exactly. As soon as I found out that Danny was brought here, I left. Look, he's my partner and I needed to be here, not sitting around on some gurney attached to monitors. I'm fine. Now please explain why was Danny put on life support? Did he stop breathing again?"

It was clear to Steve that this doctor didn't really believe him, but The doctor decided to focus the conversation on his patient. "When I heard that Detective Williams had been without oxygen for a long time I sedated him, and put him on a ventilator or respirator so we could hyper-ventilate him. The object is to get as much oxygen rich blood to the brain as possible. Given your story, I am still going to keep him on the ventilator for another twelve hours. We ran a CT scan because of the head wound which showed soft tissue swelling only. In other words he may have a very mild concussion, but other than that, his scan was normal. His EEG came back normal, which is also a very good sign."

Steve glowered. If it was so good, why wasn't his partner up and ranting about being thrown into the ocean? What Steve wouldn't give to hear Danny rage on about the shark infested waters surrounding this pineapple infested hell hole.

Kono put it into words. "You said the EEG was good. Why won't you let him wake up?"

Dr. Hallstrom shook his head. "An EEG is used to measure brain waves, but it can't tell us anything about his cerebral anoxia, the levels of oxygen in his brain right now. We're moving Detective Williams up to the ICU so that we can closely monitor him. Tomorrow morning, assuming he has a stable night, I'll have him taken off the ventilator, stop the sedatives and allow him to wake up. We'll be able to do a full neurologic workup on him at that time, which will include another EEG to determine if there was any brain damage."

Steve felt like he'd been sucker punched in the gut. "Brain damage?" The rational side of Steve's mind may have understood that brain damage was a possible side effect of severe oxygen deprivation, but it was altogether different hear the words spoken in reference to your closest friend and partner.

Dr. Hallstrom checked his notes again, before he looked back up at Steve and Kono. "Let's say that your times are correct, and Detective Williams was without any oxygen for nearly ten minutes. That is still an extended amount of time. If he had been in icy cold water it would be less of a problem, but the water he was pulled from was probably around 70 degrees. It's good that you started rescue breathing as quickly as you did. It's also good that the ambulance crew put him on oxygen, but it is still possible that he suffered neurological damage. We simply won't know until tomorrow."

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

Steve and Kono sat in silence as the ER doctor's words sunk in. Dr. Hallstrom stood up and opened his office door. Steve watched him waving a nurse over, feeling as though he couldn't quite breathe.

Brain damage.

The thought echoed over and over inside Steve's head and filled him with fear. Had he saved Danny's life only to leave him an empty shell incapable of being a father to Grace?

"June, can you take Detective William's friends over to 1124?" He turned to Steve and placed a hand on the man's shoulder. "You should come back after you see your partner. I'd like to check you and make sure you are all right."

Steve stood up and was careful not to roll his eyes. He didn't want to offend the man. "Honestly, doc, I'm fine. Yeah, I'm kind of tired, but everything I did today really isn't so far removed from an intense day of SEAL training. I'll tell you what I'll do; if I start to feel off or have any unusual symptoms, I will come back and see you. Deal?"

Dr. Hallstrom shook his head slightly. "I guess it will have to be."

When they walked into Danny's room, it took Steve a moment to register that the man lying in the bed amidst the mass of IVs, tubes, wires, and other equipment was actually his partner. He looked unusually pale, even for the mainlander. The white bandages on his head and his left hand were the same color as the sheets and not far off from the color of the flesh that they covered. He was absolutely still with the exception of the steady rise and fall of his chest in time with the whoosh of the ventilator.

Nausea bubbled up from Steve's core at the sight of his partner. Swallowing hard, he pushed the sensation down and forced himself to stare at the inert form lying on the sterile white sheets. _God, Danny, you have to pull through this. You have to be okay._

Steve looked over at Kono, expecting to see tears. Instead he saw steel in her eyes as she stared at her friend and teammate. She turned her gaze to Steve and he could almost feel her determination bleed across the space separating them. Steve drew strength from her presence and felt bolstered by what he perceived as her fierce desire to set things right for Danny.

The Five-0 commander stepped closer to the bed. He reached around the IV tubing and wires to take hold of Danny's hand. "Grace needs you, buddy. You need to hold on for her."

Steve squeezed the hand then laid it gently down on the bed. He turned to Kono, feeling a new resolve. "There is nothing we can do for Danny standing here, but we can catch the man who put him in that bed."

The young rookie nodded decisively. Steve stepped away from the bed and stopped at the nurses station. He wrote down his cell number. "Please call me if there are any changes with my partner."

Steve made sure to wait until they were outside of the ICU before he took out his cell to call Chin. "What did the divers find?"

Kono kept pace with her boss's long strides easily enough as they made their way to the exit by the ER, listening to the one sided conversation.

"I didn't think they would find anything. What about the Camaro, is it drivable or do you need me to come get you?"

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration as he listened to Chin. "Chin, I have been checked out and I'm fine, so drop it."

He only partially regretted the tone he used. He was not exaggerating when he told Dr. Hallstrom that his SEAL training was just as physically intense as what he had gone through rescuing Danny. While it was true that SEAL training didn't carry the emotional impact of the day's events, emotions were something that the Commander had become an expert at compartmentalizing.

"I'm going to drop Kono at HQ so she can follow up on the search for Milton's car, coordinate the search for Kalawai from here, and track the forensics team's findings in Waianae."

Steve and Kono had arrived at the truck and Steve stood resolute next to the driver's side holding out his hand for the keys. Kono seemed hesitant to turn them over, but Steve refused to be swayed by the look she gave him.

Steve continued to speak into his phone as he held his hand out for the keys. "Given the situation, HPD won't be headed back anytime soon. You stay there and coordinate the ground search. I'll see you in forty minutes."

With that, Steve closed the phone and took the keys Kono had dug out of her pocket. She got in the passenger side, but didn't take her eyes off of him while she buckled her seat belt.

"What?" Steve asked while trying to keep his frustration under control.

"Are you sure you're all right? You're blood pressure was too low earlier."

Steve paused for a moment. "The doctor at WCCC explained that. I held my breath for a long time. I've done that before, back in SEAL training, and I remember feeling pretty off after that session. I'll admit that today was pretty intense physically, maybe even more so than some of the training I went through. I know that out in the field I never had to push that hard to rescue someone before, but I was able to do it because of that training. So if the oxygen deprivation made me shaky and weak, and the cool air caused my blood vessels to contract like the doc said, it's only logical that my blood pressure dropped. I've been given oxygen and dry clothes. That, even more than the IV fluids I got when you took me over to WCCC, set my body up to compensate and to heal. In short, I'm fine."

At the disbelieving look on Kono's face, Steve brought his hands up in a Dannyesque fashion to enunciate his words. "I have had almost three hours to rest, and we have a murderer to catch, so we concentrate on that."

"You got it, boss."

Steve was glad to see that Kono accepted his explanation and dropped the subject. It only took a few minutes to drive to the Palace, and Steve jumped out to run in and change out of the pilfered scrubs. As they reached the steps, Steve headed down while Kono started up.

"Call me as soon as you get anything from the search for Milton's car and find out what the forensics team got at Kalawai's home. Also see if HPD has been able to track down Kalawai's father..."

"Hey, boss, I got this. You better get going."

Steve felt confident in Kono's ability to stay on top of everything and smiled inwardly to himself. She may be a rookie, but she was shaping up into a damned fine cop. Steve double-timed it down the stairs to the locker room. Sliding his familiar cargo pants and black T-shirt on seemed to breathe new energy into the ex-SEAL. He was back out and hopping into Chin's SUV within five minutes of parking it at HQ.

Much to his internal frustration, the drive back took longer than he wanted. Traffic was heavy. There were too many tourists and too many hard working natives heading home after a long day of separating those tourists from their vacation money. On more than one occasion, Steve had to keep himself from laying on the horn in an attempt to get the multitude of other motorists to move along at his speed. The Five-0 Commander, however, was pleased to see such a dominant police presence in Waianae when he finally made it there nearly an hour later.

Steve pulled up along side Chin Ho as he finished up speaking to a unit from HPD. When he jumped out, he saw that unit drive away, but spotted two more HPD cruisers slowly casing the streets leading south away from the point.

"I'm guessing that the Governor called out the entire department to find our guy."

Chin had a funny look on his face that Steve couldn't quite read. "She may have, I'm not sure. These guys are here for Danny. He may have been an HPD officer for only three months before joining the task force, but Danny had a good reputation. Then when you consider his stubborn determination to clear Mecca's name, and in the process exposing an HPD mole, respect for him seriously increased throughout the department. Some of these guys aren't even on duty, Steve. Kalawai nearly killed one of their own, and they want blood."

It wasn't lost on Steve that Chin still didn't include himself in that family of brethren police officers. He clapped a hand on the older man's shoulder. "Danny is one of _our_ own and we will catch this guy, no matter what it takes."

"How is he?"

It was a simple question, but it made Steve's gut tighten uncomfortably. He turned away from the older detective and moved toward the back of the SUV to open the hatch.

"He's in the ICU. They had to put him on life support."

Chin followed the SEAL, and reached out grabbing Steve's arm, alarm widening his eyes. "Why, what happened?"

"The doctor said it was a precaution. He went without oxygen for a long time, and they want to get as much oxygen to his brain as they can. They'll take him off in the morning and..."

Steve stopped for a moment, clenching his jaw, not wanting to put his fear into words.

"And what?"

Steve didn't look at Chin; he didn't want to see the accusation in his eyes. "They'll evaluate him for brain damage."

Steve roughly pulled the SCUBA gear from the back of the SUV. He kept himself from slamming it down on the opened tailgate, as guilt for Danny's situation threatened to rip his composure from him. The last thing he needed was to damage Chin Ho's gear, giving him something else to feel guilty about.

"Hold up. First of all, I know you, Steve. This isn't your fault. Secondly, what do you think you are doing?"

Steve still avoided Chin's gaze. "I'm going to go check out that cave before we lose the light. I figure I have a half hour to forty minute window here."

Chin shook his head. "What will that accomplish, Steve? It won't bring Danny back to us. The divers have been all through that cave. They didn't find any trace of Kalawai."

Steve finally turned burning eyes to Chin. "Danny _will_ be all right. He's strong. He has a reason to live: Grace. He'll come back for her, Chin. He would do anything for that little girl!"

"I have no doubt that Danny would go to heaven and back for his child, but I still don't see why you want to dive down to that cave. Kalawai isn't there."

Steve rummaged around the back until he found a dive light with a wrist strap. "I'm not looking for the man; I'm looking for his escape route. He came straight to this point for a reason."

Chin looked thoughtful at the explanation. "Wouldn't the HPD divers have seen another opening when they went in looking for Kalawai?"

Steve pulled his shirt off and emptied his pockets. The motion made his ribs flare up in pain, and he purposely took a deep breath, causing the pain to increase. Chin stared pointedly at his bruised and battered side. Steve chose to ignore the look and continued to speak.

"They were looking for a body, I'm not. You know as well as I do that many of the caves around the island have other passages, and unless you're familiar with that particular cave, you could swim right past a passageway and never know it. If I can find where he came out, we will have a direction to start looking."

Steve could see Chin's mind working through the theory, and there was no way to deny the SEAL's logic. The man looked back at Steve and pointed to his ribs. "That looks worse than it did before. I understand your reasoning, but are you sure you are okay to go diving?"

Steve knew that Chin was only concerned about him, and while he appreciated it, he had no time for that kind of sentimentality. He wanted to find Kalawai badly enough that he would have gone on this dive even with broken ribs. "The ribs are only bruised. It looks worse than it is."

Finally Chin nodded and seemed to accept Steve's plan. "You'll have to make it a quick search. There's only about twenty minutes of air in that tank," he said, as Steve strapped on the scuba tank.

Steve pulled the face mask over his head, and allowed it to dangle around his neck as he grabbed the dive light and flippers; a tight smile turning up the corners of his mouth. "Don't worry, I have no intention of having to hold my breath again. I'll be back in fifteen minutes. I have an idea where to look, so hopefully it won't take too long."

Chin followed him down the steep hill leading down to the rocky shore where Steve had pulled Danny from the water only a few hours ago. An eerie sense of dejavu washed over Steve as he made his way out into the cove. He half expected to see Danny's lifeless body laying there on the beach, eyes open and sightless. The sense of it was so strong that his hands began to shake, but he covered the tremor by using his hands to tighten the straps of the tank on his back. The water was calmer, now that it wasn't high tide. He was able to swim out to the cave with little effort since a greater portion of it was now visible above the water line.

Once he dove down under the surface, the SEAL pushed all emotion down and focused on the mission at hand. The cave was much darker in the waning light of day. He switched on the dive light as he moved farther into the inky blackness. His earlier impression that the cave was massive was confirmed now that he could see the interior more clearly.

_Miss a passageway? If that isn't the understatement of the century, I don't know what is! The HPD divers could have missed forty passageways even if they'd been equipped with sonar fit for a nuclear sub._

A sense of rightness settled over Steve, and he glided past a large stalactite studded with coral. The rocky walls extended past the illumination of the maglite diver's lamp he had. The space was punctuated by columns of rock that reached from the floor to the ceiling of the cavern. There were so many of these columns it was really a wonder that Steve hadn't collided with one of them during his search for Danny and subsequent rescue. As he looked toward the top of the cave, he saw a thick bridge-like structure that was made up of thousands of foot long stalactites, making it resemble a huge rock brush with stone bristles. There was open space above the bridge that could have been a good hiding place; Steve headed straight for it.

The beauty of this place was not lost on the SEAL. The top of the bristle bridge was home to a sleeping sea turtle but held no real allure as a good hiding place for the fugitive. He moved off toward the other side of the cavern swimming downward between the rock columns, sweeping the maglight across the walls, looking for another exit. Steve glanced at the timer on the tank. His air supply was getting low. He needed to pick up the pace if he was going to find Kalawai's escape route.

Closer to the floor of the cave, which was also littered with irregular sized stalagmites, something dark caught his eye. He swam down, and as he got closer he saw that it was Danny's vest. The arm opening on the left side had gotten caught on the top of one of the stalagmites that raised two feet off the floor of the cave. He reached for it dislodging it from the stone, and a small movement drew his attention to the right.

A devil scorpionfish that was almost the same color and look of the rock walls surrounding it, poked its head out from the wall on his right then seemed to disappear right into the wall itself. Steve hooked the vest over his arm and moved closer to the wall. The scorpionfish appeared almost three feet from the floor of the cave then seemed to meld right into the rock-face itself. He reached out his hand, knowing that the scorpionfish was not an aggressive species, and moved it slowly down the bumpy surface of the of the wall when suddenly he felt nothing.

The wall never reached the bottom of the cave! It was the same color and configuration of the surrounding rocks as well as the rocky surface beyond. This created an optical illusion of a solid wall that reached the floor of the cavern. Excitement mounted in Steve and he reached the bottom of the false wall and pulled himself closer.

_There's another chamber here!_

He had to move carefully to get himself and the oxygen tank under the wall. Shining his light up into the chamber, he found he could easily see the other side of the cave wall. There were far fewer rocky formations in this secondary chamber. It was a quarter of the size of the main cave and quite narrow in comparison. A shaft of light sparkled high above him and he made directly for it, knowing he was nearly out of oxygen in his tank. Within moments, his head broke the surface of the water and he found himself treading water in a huge air pocket.

The outer wall of the chamber had a large crack like opening that allowed the fading sunlight into the chamber. He switched off the dive light and allowed his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the upper portion of the chamber. He swam over to the crack and now the only source of light to look out.

_This was how Kalawai escaped._

Steve could see the beach on the lee side of the point, but while he could clearly observe the beach and surrounding area, he was perfectly hidden from view unless someone was looking directly at him. The crack in the wall was at least a foot and a half wide, but the edges were jagged and rough. Water sloshed in and out through the crack, but the opening was high enough that the passage remained essentially filled with water at least half way up the opening.

Steve knew that Kalawai must have come through here and he tried to do the same, only to find that he was hindered by the scuba gear. He braced himself against the wall and removed the tank, pushing that through the opening first. The rock wall was steep on the other side of the crack, but there were enough crags and mini ledges that he was able to set the tank against the outer surface of the rock-face without it tumbling to the surf below. Without the tank, Steve was able to squeeze through the opening, moving slowly so as not to cut his torso on the sharp rock edge. He had to suck in his belly and shimmy side to side to get out, and still managed to scrap his sore ribs even though he was being careful. Once through, he leaned against the rock-face to look at the shoreline, getting his bearings.

The sun was going down and the light was essentially open for almost three quarters of a mile. He could see the lights of the township coming on and begin to twinkle in the distance. A set of lights at regular intervals came on simultaneously a short distance up the shoreline. After looking at them for a moment, Steve realized that they were lighting up the far parking lot of the WCCC emergency care in the distance.

He needed to get down to the beach and realized that the descent would be tricky in the dimming light. He braced his hand against the rock-face as he got his footing to climb down, but stopped when he felt something against his palm. He lifted his hand up, only to find a torn swatch of bloody fabric was clinging to the craggy rock that formed a small ledge making an almost perfect handhold above the level of the water. Being the lee side of the point, the high tide wouldn't have come close enough to wash away the evidence.

_Kalawai was here._

Steve pulled the fabric from the rock, having to tug a little as it has become jammed into a small crack. It was the same color as the shirt Kalawai had been wearing. He must have torn the shirt and cut himself on the sharp rock in his haste to get away.

_I'm no forensics expert, but I know that even though this blood is already contaminated, they should still be able to tell us if it is Kalawai's blood or not._

Steve jammed the piece of fabric - the evidence - deep in his back pocket, before grabbing the scuba tank and Danny's vest and securing them over his right shoulder. The descent was somewhat difficult with the gear, the fading light, and his still very sore ribs. By the time he made it down to the shoreline, it was almost dark. He looked at his watch, the face large and luminous in the darkening night.

_Fifteen minutes? Sorry, Chin, I hope you aren't calling out the National Guard._

It had been almost an hour since he entered the water to go check out the cave, but there was nothing he could do about that. He hoisted up the gear and jogged up the beach to the base of the point, and climbed up the far gentler slope on the lee side of the point. It didn't take Steve long to get to the far steeper hill that lead down to the rocky shore where he entered the water to see Chin anxiously pacing back and forth and talking excitedly on his cell phone.

"Chin Ho Kelly!" Steve called out waving his arm.

Chin spun around, and almost dropped the phone from his hand. He looked relieved and pissed at the same time. Steve felt badly that he had worried the older man, and was prepared to hear about it when Chin got up to him.

"Kanapapiki! Brah, you really had me worried. I told Kono to get the divers back here to look for you."

Steve raised his eyebrows. "We need to cancel that order."

"S'okay. I was on the phone with the dive captain when you showed up. They know you're okay and aren't coming, but Kono is. She should be here in the next few minutes. So I take it you found another way out of that cave?"

Steve reached into his pocket and took out the bloody swatch of fabric. "Yeah, and I'll bet this comes back as a match to Kalawai."

Chin seemed more interested in the vest that lay on the ground next to his dive gear. "Is that Danny's vest?"

"Yeah, and I never would have found the passage to the other side if I hadn't gone down to pick this up. He came out on the lee side of the point. There is a space between the outer rock wall and the interior of the cavern. It's a perfect hiding place where you can see everything outside and at least a mile or so down the shoreline without being seen. I'm guessing that he waited for all of the lights and sirens to move off before he came down off the point."

Chin was nodding his head in agreement. "What about the bloody fabric? Why do you think it belongs to our guy?"

"Well it's a tight squeeze getting through the crack in the rock-face. I think he may have torn his shirt, and cut himself when he came out. It could also be blood from his nose." Chin frowned in confusion at that statement. "Danny slugged Kalawai pretty hard when they were in the water, and I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Danny broke his nose."

"Oh, yeah?" Chin said with admiration. "Score one for Danny."

Chin and Steve picked up the dive equipment and were storing it back in Chin's SUV when Kono arrived. Steve turned and actually backed up a step as she approached at full speed.

"Pa`akiki haole! What were you thinking, boss? You almost drowned today saving Danny. Then you say you'll be back in 15 minutes and an hour goes by! Are you trying to give us heart attacks?"

Steve held his hands up, waiting for the rookie to calm down. "I know how Kalawai got out of the cave unseen. It took some time to climb down and get back here, but I'm fine."

Kono looked Steve over critically, as if sizing up his assertion that he was fine. After a moment, she seemed satisfied and reached into her back pocket to pull out her note pad.

"Okay, Milton's car was found at the base of a ravine in the Kaneohe Forest Reserve. Milton was found still inside, shot in the back of the head. The car hasn't been pulled from the ravine yet, but Milton's body is with the coroner. The forensics team found the gun that Kalawai used to shoot at you and Danny. It was recovered from the brush between Kalawai's property and the neighbor's. They also pulled a slug from the door frame of the front door and that will be checked to see if it matches the slug pulled from Milton."

Steve thought back to earlier that day and felt a chill run down his spine. He hadn't seen the gun that Kalawai pointed at him, and he should have. If it hadn't been for Danny pushing him over the railing... Kono's voice drew him back. He needed to listen to her report.

"The preliminary report shows that the bullet that killed Milton was the same caliber as the gun he fired at you. HPD picked up Akamu Kalawai, Iakono's father, about an hour ago. He claims that he hasn't seen Iakono in over a week, but there is evidence of father and son both living in the house as recently as yesterday. They are holding the father as an accessory for the time being."

While Kono was giving Steve her report, Chin's phone rang and he stepped off to the side to speak with the caller. He waved to get their attention. "Hey guys, we may have just gotten a break. That was HPD. An employee at Waianae Coast Comprehensive Center was attacked out on the beach this afternoon around the time that Kalawai would have escaped. Whoever attacked the man did a real number on him. He was unconscious for most of the afternoon, but he's awake now and in the ER over there."

Steve nodded decisively. "That fits. I could see the WCCC parking lot from the opening in the rock-face where Kalawai escaped. He would have had to go that way. Let's go have a chat with the man."

TBC

A/N - Many thanks to my beta team. I hope you enjoyed the chapter. The next one is with the betas and I'm still working on chapter eight. Did everyone enjoy the newest episode with Steve falling off the cliff? I didn't get to see it! I'll have to wait until tomorrow. Have a wonderful day and a blessed Easter if I don't see you before then.  
Thanks again  
Alice I


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N** - Happy Easter readers! I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday. We were going to have a family game of bowling today, _(something we have never done before)_ but the hubby was feeling ill so we stayed home and played silly games and watched a movie instead. As a result, I find myself with a few extra minutes while the lamb is roasting so I figured I would post chapter seven. I hope you all enjoy it.

PS: The movie was from a redbox and featured Nicholas Cage, but was appropriate for the entire family. Anyone feel like guessing what it was? - Hint: my five year old liked it rather a lot.

**Chapter Seven**

Kevika Hun, Dr. Hanna's PA, had a regular habit of surfing on his lunch break. Today was no exception as the warm rays of the sun and the rolling waves called to him like a siren. His habit of spending his lunch hours out on the ocean was a point of contention between him and Dr. Hanna who had encouraged him to go to medical school. The Doctor would have preferred to see Kevika spending his free time hitting the books, rather than hitting the waves. The young physician's assistant managed to ride the waves four times before he knew it was time to get back to work, and headed for the beach.

When he reached the shore and came up onto the beach, he dropped his board, kicking off the leash. He caught sight of a young man about his age, half-staggering, half-running down the beach. The front of his shirt was heavily stained with blood, while the side of the garment sported a large tear revealing a nasty gash. The man's face was also bloody, and it looked like his nose was badly broken. Even from a distance of at least thirty feet, Kevika could see that the man's eyes were beginning to blacken in a classic raccoon mask.

He called out to the man as he jogged up to him. "Yo, brah, you need some help?"

As Kevika approached, he quickly took visual stock of the man's injuries. His nose was definitely broken and was still bleeding. The gash along his right side looked as though it would need minimally ten stitches, and Kevika wondered what had happened. The man's clothes were soaking wet, but to the best of his knowledge, no one else had been out surfing at the time he was and the clothes the man wore were not ones you would see a surfer wear.

Kevika slowed in his approach as he got closer. The young man had not responded to his calls and almost looked as though he were trying to avoid an encounter with the PA. Kevika stopped five feet away from the man, distracted by a glint of metal as the man turned away from him as though looking for something. When the injured man turned, Kevika got a better look at his side. He would definitely need stitches for that injury.

"Hey, that's a nasty gash on your side, brah. I work at the medical center just over there." The PA turned his head and pointed to the Waianae Critical Care Center. When he turned back, the man had closed the distance between them. Kevika froze in shock as he realized that the glint of metal he had seen was the sunlight flashing off of handcuffs dangling from the man's wrist.

Genuine fear rushed through him in that instant when he saw a look of demented hatred in the injured man's eyes. There was no hesitation. The injured man had picked up a fist sized rock from the stony beach, and brought it up, smashing it with stunning force into the side of Hun's head. That was the last thing Kevika remembered as pain exploded through his skull, before blackness engulfed him.

* * *

Because the Waianae beach on the lee side of the point had so many rocks littered throughout the sand, it was not frequented nearly as much as Pokai Bay Beach Park, situated on the other side of the point. An unfortunate happenstance for Kevika Hun, as he lay on the beach unconscious for over an hour, before one of the nurses he worked with came looking for him when he didn't return from his lunch break.

When the Five-0 team arrived at WCCC, Dr. Hanna was clearly upset and distracted. His work load had increased by a seriously injured patient while at the same time hampered by the loss of his PA. "Commander McGarrett, you'll have to bear with me here. I can speak with you but it will have to be while I continue to work."

Steve looked dubiously at the doctor. "This isn't a conversation for just anyone's ears, Doctor."

Dr. Hanna was in the process of casting the broken arm of a young boy. "This is Ming Yun Sung. He and his parents speak no English so that shouldn't be a problem."

Steve just raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "So tell me what happened to your nurse."

"Kevika isn't a nurse, Commander. He is my PA; my physician's assistant. Normally he would be attending to Ming Yun, but as he is incapable of standing up at the moment without falling over..."

Steve watched as the doctor took a bright green roll out of a bucket of warm water and began to wrap it around the boy's wrist. "My apologies. What happened to your PA?"

"Kevika usually goes out to the beach on his lunch break. He works long hours, the same as any of us. Normally he is here from six in the morning to seven or eight at night. When two hours passed without him coming back, we got concerned. Our charge nurse, Julie, found him out on the beach with his head smashed in. He wavered in and out of consciousness most of the afternoon, which isn't surprising considering his skull was fractured and he has a severe concussion."

"Was he able to tell you anything about the man who attacked him?" Steve asked.

Dr. Hanna turned and looked at Steve, then past him to the room that Kevika was in. "All he said was that he was just trying to help. The man who attacked him was injured. Kevika is more alert now."

"Is is alright for us to interview him now?" Steve asked hopefully.

Dr. Hanna nodded as he continued to apply more cast material to the boy's arm. "Yes, but try to keep it as short as you can. I'll be in to check on him as soon as I finish here."

* * *

Steve, Chin and Kono listened intently to the PA's story, fitting his account into the timeline. Steve showed a picture of Kalawai that he pulled up on his phone, and Kevika was able to confirm the identity of his attacker. The Five-0 Commander turned to his teammates as they all stepped out into the main area of the WCCC emergency department. "It's been over five hours since Kalawai attacked Kevika, so he could be anywhere at this point."

"I don't know about that," Chin said. "From what Mr. Hun said, Kalawai was injured seriously enough to require a lot of stitches, and he's also sporting a broken nose that was still bleeding nearly an hour after Danny hit him. Where is he going to go where he won't immediately attract attention?"

Steve nodded. "That makes sense. Kalawai incapacitated the PA so he could get away. Unless he plans on knocking anyone out who happens to see him, he would have to find a safe place to hide until the heat wore off or he had the cover of darkness."

Steve looked out the window at the far end of the ER near the ambulance bay doors. He exchanged a look with both Kono and Chin. "We're running out of time. We need to find out where Kalawai went. Now that it's dark, he will be on the move."

Chin had pulled out his phone when he glanced around, as if realizing where he was. "Not supposed to use these things in here. I'll go outside and pull up a detailed map of the area so we can figure out what his next best option would be."

Chin started walking toward the exit with Kono and Steve on his heels when Steve felt a hand on his arm. He turned back to see Dr. Hanna.

"Go on ahead and get that map pulled up. I'll be right there." Steve turned back to the doctor, but before he could say anything to the man, the doctor began speaking.

"I didn't mean to be abrupt earlier. I'm glad to see that you are still standing, Commander. I was worried when you left this afternoon, but you don't seem too much the worse for wear."

"I'm fine, but thanks for asking." Steve turned to follow his team out the door, only to stop once again at the sound of the doctor's voice.

"It's astonishing that Kevika has such a clear memory of what happened this afternoon considering his injury. Commander McGarrett, this attack on one of my staff was brutal and unwarranted. Kevika was only trying to help this man."

Steve could see how upset Dr. Hanna was over this attack on one of his people. He placed his hands on the doctor's shoulders. "I promise you we will find the man who did this. He will pay for his crimes."

The conviction in Steve's face and voice must have carried clearly, because the doctor nodded his head in acknowledgement, and turned back to his busy ER. Steve watched him for a moment longer before heading outside where his team waited.

Chin had brought up a map of the area around the medical center. "The beach out here is too narrow and too exposed. He would have had to get to cover quickly. His options would have been pretty limited. The waste treatment plant next door covers a lot of territory. The next available option would be something I'm guessing Kalawai would avoid."

Steve frowned at the older detective. "Why's that?"

"After the industrial complex that the waste treatment plant sits on, is the Waianae Coast Community Mental Health Center. Kalawai has spent a fair amount of time at their in-house facility, and I think he would want to avoid the place. We have to count on Kalawai needing to find a place that is out of sight where he can rest. That doctor described some nasty injuries. The gash in his side sounds like it would slow him down quite a bit, not to mention drawing unwanted attention."

Steve looked at the map that Chin had pulled up on his phone. "Everything else is residential. It's going to be hard for him to move around even through the streets at night with so much in the way of police presence and manhunt covering the area."

Chin looked again then tapped twice on his screen to enlarge the map image. "If I were him, I might head here," he said, pointing to an area on the screen. "Just over a half a mile down the coast line is Jembatan bridge that runs over the Mailiilii stream. With all the police presence, he could easily have decided to hole up under that bridge for the afternoon. It would keep him out of sight and give him a relatively safe place to rest."

"Let's go check it out," Steve said, as he jumped up into Chin's truck.

The Jembatan bridge was only fifteen feet above the level of the Mailiilii stream. The coast side of the bridge overlooked the stream which emptied out into the ocean. The banks were steep and rocky, but the banks of the inland side of the bridge were solid concrete and smooth. Steve pulled the truck over into a small parking area just past the south end of the bridge and hopped out, followed by Chin. Kono brought her own car and parked next to her cousin's vehicle.

The north side of the bridge was inaccessible from the coastline as the stream followed the Farrington Highway for several hundred yards before it turned inward under the bridge. Kalawai, Steve realized, would have had no choice but to walk along the busy thoroughfare to get to the opposite side of the bridge.

"There's no way he could have gone unnoticed by someone. Has HPD talked with people in this area to find out if anyone saw something?" Steve wanted to know.

"Kalawai attacked Kevika Hun around one o'clock in the afternoon, then probably headed this way following the coastline. If he kept his head down and stayed on the right side of the road, it's possible that he was able to get across without anyone taking much notice of him. At that hour there would have been less foot traffic, but I'll check with the officer in charge of the canvas."

Within minutes the team were armed with flashlights and they headed over to the steep rocky bank of the coast side of the bridge. It was a slippery descent down the twenty feet of embankment. Kono, who was the smallest and most lithe, took the lead in a diagonal decent that brought her to the underside of the bridge. The sound of the traffic above her head was a little disconcerting in what seemed a relatively cramped space given the steepness of the embankment.

Steve and Chin were right behind her. Kono found a flattened area directly underneath the center of the road above her and sat down, shining her light around looking for any sign that Kalawai had been there. The area was dug into the steep bank and was about six feet wide and four or five feet deep. The head room was cramped, though, because of the height of the bridge over the water. Kneeling brought Steve's head almost to the support struts on this side of the bridge. Steve assumed that the flattened area was designed as a way to let engineers access the underside of the bridge for maintenance purposes.

Kono's flashlight moved across the area in a grid pattern and a glint of metal caught Steve's eye.

"Hey, Kono, shine the light over there," he said, pointing to where he had seen the flash of light. He crawled on his belly head first toward the bottom of the embankment using his own flashlight as a guide. Sitting almost at the bottom of the embankment were Danny's handcuffs.

Steve crab-crawled backward up the embankment toward the cousins. The movement caused his left side to throb painfully, making his breath catch in his throat. Chin and Kono moved aside to give Steve's large frame room to maneuver back into a sitting position. When he was turned around, he was careful to wipe the pain from his face before he looked at Chin.

"You called it right. Kalawai was here." Steve held the handcuffs up for the others to see. There was a two inch shard of something metallic jammed into the key hole. "They are bloody and still wet, but in this humidity, it's hard to say how long ago he got these off. He has the cover of darkness now, so where did he go? He can't move inland upstream. The rocky bank is hard enough to navigate; there is no possible way for him to move along the concrete."

Kono shook her head. "He must have come back out and went down the shoreline."

Steve shook his head. He was tired to his bones, his ribs throbbed painfully with each breath, and his muscles quivered with fatigue. "Let's get out of here and back to the cars."

Steve allowed Chin and Kono to move ahead. He could tell himself that he was watching their six, but the truth was he didn't want to slow them down as the prolonged fatigue of the day began to rob him of his strength. By the time they got back up to where the cars were parked, Steve was spent and breathing hard.

"Chin, can you bring up that map again?"

Steve couldn't help but notice Chin eyeing him critically. The older man was sharp and even in the dark, Steve knew that Chin could tell he was close to his limit physically. As Steve and Kono leaned against the opened tailgate of the SUV, Chin leaned toward them with the phone.

"The beach is more open and sandy from here south. The whole area is densely packed, and residential for the next few miles. With the patrols still out looking for him in such great number, I'm not sure he would attempt to wander through the neighborhoods. There are no lights out on the beach so if he stayed close to the shore, he might have been able to walk south without being noticed."

Kono asked, "Do you think he would try to seek medical attention for his injuries?"

Chin shook his head. "I doubt it. If he was going to get help, he would have been far better off getting that attention when Kevika offered it this afternoon while all the focus was on Danny and getting him out of the water. My guess is he is holed up somewhere for the night, or he's still running, but keeping to the shadows."

Steve looked down the beach toward the south. Another HPD cruiser drove by slowly and turned left down one of the side streets off the Farrington Highway. "Chin may be right; I don't think he would take to the surface streets. They're too exposed with the police patrols looking for him, but out here on the beach he could move fairly quickly and be hard to spot."

Steve pushed himself off the truck and began to walk out to the beach. Chin called out, "Where are you going?"

"We just decided that Kalawai went this way because it's the most reasonable course for him to take," Steve replied. He wondered briefly if he had one of the looks on his face that Danny was so fond of describing? Judging by the faces of his team he would guess that he had what Danny just the previous week described as 'that typically perplexed expression you get when you can't see past your own internal logic in any given situation.'

Steve looked back at the two cousins. They were both staring at him with concerned frowns. He chose to ignore the looks and spread his arms out. "Well? Are you coming?"

Chin sighed before speaking. "Steve, you've had it. You need to rest."

Steve just shook his head. "I'll rest when we catch Kalawai." Then he turned away from his team and headed out to the beach, assuming that they would follow him. He looked around as he got out onto the sand, trying to think like the fugitive. He moved closer to the water, which put him farther away from the lights of the streets and park.

Where did you go? Where would I go if I were you?

Steve looked south and started off in that direction with Kono and Chin trailing behind. A sense of immediacy burned through the Five-0 Commander and without even consciously doing so, he called upon a deeper reserve of stamina and picked up the pace until they were all lightly jogging. It had been dark for only about two hours. If they could figure out which way Kalawai had gone, they might be able to catch up with him, especially if he was injured.

Steve slowed down slightly as he saw something up ahead. The fatigue that was beginning to seep back into his bones over the last quarter of a mile left him as adrenaline surged through his system. A lone figure was sitting on the beach a hundred yards south of them. Steve looked at Kono and Chin and indicated that they should take up flanking positions. Kono moved off toward the highway, away from the water, moving silently and quickly seeking to come in from the far side. Chin stayed close to the water while Steve took a path toward the figure midway between the freeway and the water's edge. As they approached, the figure was clearly a man and he didn't seem to notice them at all. When Steve was within twenty feet he silently pulled his gun out as he carefully moved forward.

Steve glanced at Chin who was the most visually exposed. The older detective had also unholstered his gun, but was holding it down by his right side so that it was shielded from the man's line of sight. Kono had moved into position behind the seated man also with her gun drawn, and carefully approached from the road.

Satisfied that his team was in place, Steve raised his weapon aiming it at the man sitting there quietly. "Kalawai!"

The man turned his head toward the sound of the shout. Steve was close enough now that he could clearly see the man's face and it wasn't the face he expected to see. It took the man a moment to register that McGarrett was pointing a gun at him. He looked quickly around and saw that he was surrounded. His eyes opened wide in fear and his hands came up in a gesture of surrender, even as the Five-0 team lowered their weapons.

Sheer terror resonated through the man's voice. "Please don't shoot. Take what ever you want, just don't hurt me," the man pleaded, as he scrambled backward away from Steve.

McGarrett holstered his weapon and raised his palm to the man. "It's all right, we aren't going to hurt you. Just relax, sir."

The man didn't look convinced and brought his hands down so he could scramble to his feet. He looked about to bolt when Chin held up his badge and called out. "Wait, we're the police, we just want to ask you a couple of questions."

That stopped the man, who eyed the three 'police' officers carefully approaching him with a what was clearly a mixture of apprehension and uncertainty. "You're the police? You don't look like the police," he said, backing slowly away from the trio.

Steve knew that this man could be a potential witness, and raised his shirt tail exposing his badge attached to his pants. "We're sorry to have startled you, sir."

The man stopped backing away as his eyes grew wide before narrowing. "Startled? Are you kidding? You scared the crap out of me with those guns," the man said, as genuine anger crept into his voice.

"There is a fugitive on the loose and we thought that you might have been him," Steve explained, in the most placating voice he could muster. "Can you tell us if you have seen anyone come this way? The man we are looking for would have tried to keep to himself and would have been heading southward down the shoreline."

"I've been sitting here for over an hour. The only person I have seen was some kind of parks worker."

"A parks worker?" Steve asked confused.

"Yeah, he had one of those green overall uniforms on, wore a ball cap, and was carrying a small plastic bag in one hand. Other than that I haven't seen anyone pass by on the beach, but I have been facing the water. If this man you are looking for walked along the side of the road, I never would have noticed him."

Chin looked up at the moon. It was getting higher in the sky, and as the evening progressed it would cast more light on the landscape. "Are you sure about how long you have been sitting out here?"

A sour look crossed over the man's face. "Oh, I'm sure. My wife and I had a fight and I came out here to cool off. Sorry I couldn't be more help. Is this fugitive dangerous? Maybe I should go find my wife."

"I don't think you have to worry, sir," Chin said. "The man we're looking for would be doing everything possible to go unnoticed, and wouldn't want to interact with anyone."

The man glanced looked around a little apprehensively. "Uh, can I go now?"

Steve nodded and watched as the man made a beeline for the parking area alongside the road. He couldn't blame the man for being a little nervous. He was sure Danny would have a thing or two to say about scaring a civilian with drawn weapons. The adrenaline that went through his system when he thought they had cornered Kalawai drained from his system quickly, leaving him exhausted.

He bent down and put his hands on his knees. "So if he came this way, then Kalawai is at least an hour if not more ahead of us and could be virtually anywhere." The frustration he felt was so powerful there was no way to keep it from his voice.

Kono approached and laid a hand gently on Steve's shoulder. "Hey, boss. This isn't getting us anywhere. You need to rest. Remember what the doctor told you this afternoon?"

Steve looked up at her, "I spoke with a couple of doctors today."

"You're getting to that point where you can't just keep going any longer. We can see that your ribs hurt; you have kept your left arm protectively close to your side for the last half an hour."

Steve straightened up but the pull on his ribs betrayed his composure and he winced visibly.

Chin placed a hand on Steve's shoulder. "You aren't going to do Danny any good if you collapse out here from sheer exhaustion. We'll tell HPD our theory of where Kalawai might have gone, and they can continue the search. For right now, you need to call it a night, because I sure won't be able to carry you back to my car if you drop out here."

Steve hated the thought of giving up the search for Kalawai, but Chin and Kono were right. He was so far beyond tired, that he knew he could 'drop' as Chin had put it. At this point, he was functioning on sheer force of will. He nodded his head in agreement and the trio turned back toward the north and the nearly half mile trek back to the cars.

**TBC**


	8. Chapter 8

A/N - I am completely confused. I thought this chapter was posted ages ago. Am I cracked? Or have the changes here at FFN caused this chapter to do a Houdini? Well, in any case this is chapter eight. I am working on chapter nine. There are only a couple of chapter left to go. Sorry about the long wait.

After this story is completed I think I may not be around too much any more. I seem to be having some difficulty concentrating on anything for more than a brief period of time. It must be that Alzheimer's kicking in. Come on guys you know I'm kidding, I don't have Alzheimer's, but I am having a lot of trouble concentrating and remembering things. It could be that I thought I posted chapter eight but never actually did! My memory has gotten that bad. I blame it on a pathological lack of sleep. Between three over achieving kids in 3 different schools (due to the difference in their ages), a full time job working the night shift, the rest of the world having no clue that night shift workers actually need to sleep during the day time, and a household to run, I have pushed myself to my limit of endurance!

Whew, I need a breath after that run on sentence! LOL. I still always have that nagging in the back of my mind that I have actual fans of my stories out there looking for an update, so I am committed to finishing my open stories and then taking a break. I plan to simplify my life as much as possible in hopes that my focus and memory do a rebound. I feel very honored that so many folks have liked my silly little stories. It is unbelievably gratifying that someone is actually reading and enjoying my work. I have tried to get my husband to read my work and give me his opinion, but even though we celebrated 18 years yesterday, he has still never read anything that I have written! So I thank each and every one of you who have taken the time to read and give feedback. It makes me feel like I have actually accomplished something. You guys rock.

Love ya all. Please enjoy and I promise chapter nine shouldn't be but a couple of week away.

Alice I

**Chapter Eight**

Chin Ho Kelly felt at home with his team. He had found his place in the world when he joined Steve McGarrett's team on the Five-0 task force. Chin was very protective of his family and he considered Five-0 his family. As they made their way back to the vehicles the older dective could see that Steve was in pain but hiding that face. He held his left arm close to his side as they walked northward down the beach and it wasn't lost on him that Steve gravitated closer to the water where the sand was firmer and easier to walk on.

Chin couldn't help but notice the striking similarties between the Five-0 Commander and his father. Being a partner with a McGarrett seemed to have inherant responsibilities regardless of which vintage you were dealing with. Steve was easily as stubborn as his father was, if not more so. Chin understood that stubborness and respected it. It was a trait that allowed both Steve and his father to function at a level that seemed so uch higher than other people. It could also be a burden, in that getting either of them to admit to the need to stop and rest.

Chin was prepared to give Steve a hard-line argument as to why he wouldn't be driving when they left, but much to his surprise the Commander simply walked over to the passenger side of his SUV and got in. Kono exchanged a look with him, but refrained from saying anything.

"Kono, I want you to contact the sweep commander and get HPD to concentrate the search south of Waianae. The area is pretty residential, but I'm sure there are at least a few homes that are empty. It's possible that Kalawai could be hiding out within the neighborhoods to the south of us. We know that he is at the very least a mile south of WCCC. My guess is he has moved on past the community mental health center, but I could be wrong. You should probably have someone check the in-house facility. Kalawai would be familiar with the grounds and know if there were any good hiding places."

Kono had a curious look on her face. "Would a place like that have medical facilities?"

Chin raised his eyebrows at the young rookie. She was thinking like a good cop. "I'm sure there is an infirmary at the very least. You should have an HPD unit check out the facility. Kalawai's familiarity with the grounds and facility might make it a good place for him to stop to get some bandages or clean clothes."

"You got it, cuz." Kono looked past Chin Ho at Steve. "Hey, Boss, get some rest. If we find anything you'll be my first call."

Steve leaned his head back on the head rest. He had a good team and he knew he could trust them to keep the investigation and the search on track. Chin had learned from the best. Steve never doubted his father's ability as a cop and Chin had learned from him.

Steve hated giving into the fatigue and discomfort he was feeling, but that was nothing compared to the guilt he felt burning in his gut. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Danny lying on the beach, eyes open and sightless. This should never have happened, and no matter how many different ways he tried to look at the situation, he knew in his heart that he should have realized what Kalawai was going to do. What happened to Danny was his fault.

Chin climbed up into the driver's side of the SUV and looked over at McGarrett for a moment before turning on the engine. "You okay, Steve?"

Steve didn't even bother opening his eyes. "I'm good. Lets get back to HMC West. I want to check on Danny and see how he's doing."

Chin's voice didn't betray any emotion, but Steve could tell that he was concerned. "Okay, brah, but then you need to go home and get some rest. We'll catch up with Kalawai in the morning."

The ride back to Honolulu didn't take very long because traffic was light during the evening hours. Steve dosed off almost as soon as they hit the Farrington Highway and didn't rouse until Chin parked the car in the hospital's lot.

"We're here, Steve."

McGarrett opened his eyes and took a moment to focus. He was still bone tired, but the short nap had refreshed him enough to function at a level that was much closer to his norm. As Steve and Chin walked down the hallway from the elevators to the ICU an alarm could be heard from the unit and several people in medical attire rushed past the two Five-0 detectives. McGarrett heard one of them say, "code blue" and his gut clenched in fear. Steve and Chin exchanged a worried look and moved as quickly as they could down the hallway toward the ICU.

Their admittance to the unit was hampered by the activity and a nurse or possibly an aide came over to the unit entrance. "I'm sorry but you can't come in at the moment."

Steve pulled out his badge and waved it at her, but she was not swayed. "Look my partner is in there. I need to know what's happening with him."

The woman gave McGarrett a sympathetic look and pointed to a small waiting area just outside the ICU. "I'm really sorry, but you need to wait out here until we have the situation under control." She then turned away from them and closed the main door to the unit.

Steve was about to protest and walk right through the closed door when Chin put a restraining hand on his arm. "Steve, you gotta let them do their jobs."

Steve knew Chin was right, but he didn't move away from the now closed door to the ICU. "Think about it, brah, do you really want them to stop what they are doing to answer our questions?"

Steve crumbled under Chin's reasoning. Of course he didn't want the medical staff to stop working. He dropped his head to his chest and turned away from the doors, and headed for the small waiting area that had been indicated. The room was open to the corridor but tucked off in a corner on the left side of the hallway. They had turn round a slight bend to walk into the area which offered a modicum of privacy for the family members of patients in the ICU.

The room wasn't particularly large but it would easily accommodate about fifteen people if necessary. The seats were unlike the hard plastic chairs in the ER waiting area. These seats also set up in a bank of two rows facing each other were plush with thick fabric cushions. The walls were a soft peach color with one wall being windows that went from about hip level to the ceiling. A woman was in the far corner turned away from them and speaking softly into a cell phone. Steve couldn't hear what was said but something about the voice drew his attention.

_Was that an English accent?_

"Rachel?" Steve asked.

The woman turned and Steve's eyes opened wide to see Danny's ex-wife standing there. She quickly ended her phone call and walked up to the Five-0 detectives. "Commander, McGarrett."

Steve looked at her face and realized it was calm and composed. He glanced back toward the closed doors of the ICU, and then back at Rachel; a confused frown pulling his eyebrows together.

Rachel seemed to understand and she reached out to touch Steve's arm. "Oh, no that isn't for Danny. All visitors were asked to leave the ICU when one of the patients had something happen."

Relief flooded through Steve and he found himself sitting down as his knees grew weak. Rachel took the seat next to him and glanced up at Chin. "I'm Rachel Edwards; Daniel's ex-wife," she introduced herself.

"Hello, I'm Chin Ho Kelly. I work with Danny on the task force. It's nice to meet you."

Steve took the moment while Chin and Rachel were introducing themselves to each other to make sure his breathing was under control. "Rachel, I wasn't expecting to see you. Where is Grace? Did you get a call from the hospital? Is Danny all right?"

Steve didn't want to sound frantic, but his heart rate hadn't quite slowed down yet. Rachel seemed to understand and spoke calmly answering all of his rapid fire questions. "No, I didn't get a call from the hospital. When I arrived they said that Danny is doing just fine. Grace is home with a sitter at the moment.

"Commander, I wanted to apologize for my behavior this afternoon. I had no right to treat you the way that I did, and then run out like that. I just... I was overwhelmed with everything."

Steve sighed and nodded. "Rachel, you don't have to be sorry. I know that the last thing you expected to deal with was something like this happening to Danny. How is Grace doing with all of this?"

Rachel sat up a little straighter. "She isn't very Happy with me at the moment. She wanted to come see her father tonight, but I don't want her to see him like this. All those tubes and the respirator would frighten her. She can be as stubborn as her father, I'm afraid. The doctor said that he was going to take Danny off the respirator in the morning so, I promised her that I would bring her tomorrow morning before school. I'm just praying that he will be all right."

Steve knew that Rachel was worried about brain damage. If he were truthful he was just as concerned, but felt the need to allay Rachel's fears. "Danny is strong, and stubborn, and he is devoted to Grace. He'll pull through this, Rachel. By tomorrow afternoon he'll be complaining about everything and asking for pizza without pineapple on it."

A small smile turned up the corners of his mouth as though picturing Danny in full rant mode with his hands flailing all over the place. Steve couldn't help but notice the look in the young woman's eyes. It was clear to him that Danny's ex was still very much in love with him.

Rachel's voice pulled him from his musings. "I'm really sorry to do this again, but I must get back home. The sitter has a curfew."

"It's all right, Rachel. Try not to worry, Danny will be fine."

Rachel got up to leave and shook Chin's hand as well as Steve's. Once she had disappeared down the hallway Chin sat down next to Steve with a quizzical look on his face. "She's not what I expected."

"Rachel, is definitely a very interesting woman."

Chin looked in the direction she had gone. "It seemed to me that she still has some pretty strong feelings for our boy."

Steve nodded. "Yeah, That's the feeling I got when we used her house as a stakeout during the triathlon. She just couldn't deal with the stress of being a cop's wife."

Chin nodded knowingly. "It's a hard thing, constantly worrying that your partner won't come home. It's too bad that had to come between two people who obviously still care very much about each other."

Steve tended to agree with Chin, but he also understood that the job took a toll on families. His father's recorded message echoed in his mind.

"_The toll that it took on my family; the way that it hurt them; it's something I think about everyday."_

"Danny isn't the easiest person to live with. He's one of the best cops I've ever known, but this job - it takes no prisoners sometimes."

Chin looked a little confused. "How's that?"

"Danny's a great cop. He's totally dedicated to this job maybe to the exclusion of other important things like family. Danny hasn't talked to me about his break up with Rachel except to say that he wondered if Grace would think of him as a selfish son of a bitch. He told me that this job is all he's got and that he's good at it. Maybe that just wasn't enough for Rachel."

Chin shook his head. "I don't know, brah. I know how much this job can effect family, maybe more than some."

Steve nodded his head. Chin Ho had lost a lot including the alliance and respect of many of his own family members over issues with the HPD.

"Steve, I know how dedicated Danny is to his job, but the man left his home, his parents, his siblings, and his friends, and moved halfway around the world just so that he could be near his child. That just doesn't strike me as a man who put the job before his family."

Steve leaned back against the cushion of the seat he was in. "That's true. Danny has never been very comfortable here in Hawaii, but he would do anything for Grace. It's too bad that it didn't work out between Danny and Rachel. He'll never admit it, but I know he still loves her, and I think she may still love him. She even crashed Step Stan's car during that stakeout to get Danny out of a tight spot."

The same nurse or aide who prevented Steve from coming into the ICU walked out to the waiting area. "We're sorry that you had to wait out here, but we had an emergency with another patient to take care of. You can come in now and see Detective Williams. His nurse is waiting to update you on his condition, if you'd just follow me."

Steve and Chin exchanged a concerned look and got up to follow the woman. They walked into the ICU and passed by one of the large glassed doors that led to one of the rooms. Even though the curtain on the inside of the door was pulled closed it didn't completely block the view of the room, especially the floor which was covered in a copious amount of blood that the janitorial staff was in the process of mopping up.

The same nurse that Steve had spoken to earlier that day was still there and just finished hanging another bag of some kind of IV fluid attached to a line that snaked it's way under the blanket covering Danny. Steve pointed over his shoulder back toward the other room with his thumb. "It looks a little like a crime scene over there."

The woman smiled slightly. "GI bleeds can be very messy. When we have an emergency like that we need to clear all visitors from the unit so that the staff can concentrate on the issue at hand. I'm sorry you had to wait."

Steve noticed that Danny looked much the same as he had earlier, with the notable exception of his complexion. He had far more color in his cheeks than he had that afternoon. "How is he doing?"

"Your partner is doing very well. His blood oxygen levels are good and have been all day. He is still under sedation, but Dr. Hallstrom ordered another EEG which came back with very positive results. His heart rhythm is strong and normal. His lungs still sound clear although that could always change over the next twenty four hours given that this was a wet drowning, but all in all, he is doing very well."

Steve was bolstered by the good report and stepped over to the side of the bed. He took a hold of Danny's hand and squeezed. "Hang in there, Buddy."

Steve looked up and saw Chin standing back close to the door. He got the impression that Chin was giving him a few moments. "Chin, I'm going to go get some coffee. Why don't you stay with Danny for a few minutes?"

Stepping out of the room Steve walked half way down the corridor toward the exit to the ICU before stopping and leaning against the wall. The stress and fatigue seemed to all come crashing down at once and he felt a little dizzy. This had been one of the longest days that he could remember. Surely he had endured harder days during his extensive military career, but at that moment he couldn't bring a single one to mind.

Steve didn't realize that he had slowly slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor with his head resting on his knees. He didn't realize that he had begun to shake drawing the attention of the nursing staff. He had no idea how long he sat there in this awkward position making his ribs throb painfully. Chin's voice was the first thing to penetrate his fatigue fogged awareness as the older man's hand rested lightly on his shoulder.

"Steve. Hey, brah, can you hear me?"

"I'm good." Steve replied automatically.

"Not sure I'd agree with you. Come on, lets let the ladies check you out." Chin said as he grabbed Steve under his arm and helped him to regain his feet.

Once he was up the Five-0 commander shook his head. "Nah, I'm just a bit tired. I'll be fine."

Danny's nurse guided him over to a chair at the nurses station. "Commander McGarrett, I'm sure that is true, but would you humor me and let me take your blood pressure?"

Steve looked up into her ernest green eyes and just nodded. He knew that they wouldn't let him leave unless he submitted to the request so the most logical thing to do was to stay put and let the woman do her job. She wheeled over a box on a pole that had a blood pressure cuff attached to it. The front of the instrument had several screens that gave different information as the cuff inflated around his bicep then deflated.

"Your blood pressure is a little low, but not overly so, and your pulse is fine. Did you feel dizzy?"

Steve shook his head. "No, I'm just tired. It's been a really long day."

"I can imagine. Commander, you really should go home and get some rest. There is nothing you can do here. Your partner is doing very well and I have your cell phone number in case anything changes with him."

Steve knew that she was right. Staying here was illogical and he would be in no condition to continue the search for Kalawai in the morning if he didn't get some sleep. "What time will the tube come out tomorrow?"

"Dr. Hallstrom will remove the respirator at seven in the morning and take him off the sedation. I would expect him to be waking up by seven thirty or eight o'clock depending on how he handles sedation. Everyone is a little different."

Steve nodded his understanding. "You'll call me if there are any problems with him?"

"You will be my second call, Commander."

Steve looked up at Chin. "Can you give me a lift home and be back by seven to pick me up?"

Chin still looked concerned, but seemed to defer to the nurse's opinion that Steve was fine. "You got it boss."

* * *

Chin had just closed the door of Steve's house behind him when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He walked back to his SUV as he glanced down and saw that it was Kono calling. "Hey, Kono, what's the word?" Chin put the phone on speaker as he climbed into his vehicle and started it up.

"Chin, you called it right. Kalawai _did_ pay a visit to the Waianae Coast Community Mental Health Center. A utility entrance in the back was his access. There is a camera back there, but it was broken some time ago and due to budget cuts it was one of the items low on the list of priorities where the money was concerned. The patients aren't allowed access to the rear of the property where the utility entrance is and it's kept padlocked."

Chin pulled out of McGarrett's driveway and pulled out heading north. "What makes you think that it was our guy?"

"Kalawai was a patient at the facility during a time when the rear of the building was in use, so he should know about it, but it helped that he was picked up on the video inside the building."

"Was his face visible in the video?" Chin wanted to know.

"No, he knew where the cameras were and kept his face turned away. He was carrying some dark green utilities management overalls. The vid shows him entering the infirmary and leaving a few minutes later wearing the coveralls, but get this, he still had the handcuffs hanging from his wrist. He grabbed a bunch of gauze some medical tape a couple of towels, and what looks like some plastic bags."

Chin frowned and shook his head. "Wait, so that means he doubled back to the Jembatan bridge after leaving the center. Why would he patch up his wounds but not take the cuffs off while he was there. He obviously jimmied the lock on the cuffs while he was under the bridge, but why wait and why go back?"

"He had to get out of the infirmary quickly. Kalawai must have known that security would have picked him up on the internal video. He left his clothes behind and threw on the coveralls. When he left the infirmary and headed back toward the utility entrance it was only moments before security showed up. By that time most of the available HPD cruisers were in the area. I'm thinking he went back to the bridge to take care of his injuries, get the cuffs off and wait until the sun went down."

"Kono, were you able to talk with the guard on duty at the center this afternoon?"

"Already way ahead of you, cuz. He saw Kalawai on the monitor and didn't recognize him. He noticed the bloody shirt, which is what drew his attention, and knew that the infirmary was unstaffed at that time. Patients aren't allowed access to the infirmary without an escort, so he came down to investigate. He would have gotten there sooner except that the service elevator was disabled with wedge jammed into the open doors and the stair cases are tripped for alarms to go off because they are only to be used in emergencies. The guard had to go back to the security office to disable the stair alarm system before he could get down to the first floor where the infirmary is located. Playing back the video, it looks like he missed Kalawai by only the length of a corridor."

Chin turned right onto the Farrington Highway. "Are you still at the center?"

"Yes, HPD is dusting for prints to confirm that is was Kalawai, but the clothes left in the trash bin are the same that Kalawai were wearing earlier."

"Okay, I'm on my way to you." Chin said as he speeded up.

"What about Steve and Danny?"

"Danny is holding his own. There haven't been any problems. Steve is beyond exhausted, and I took him home. I don't want to call him right now, he needs to sleep more than he needs to know where Kalawai was five hours ago. Hey, good work, Kono."

TBC

PS: I have noticed that the text of many stories are centered rather than left justified. I hope that doesn't happen when I tell this thing to post. I hate centered text. It drives me nuts.


End file.
